trade

The Trade Bill currently passing through parliament could result in Britain doing trade deals which undergo less scrutiny than through the European Union. This is not taking back control, argues SOPHIE HARDEFELDT

New research has found major discrepancies in the reporting of fish stocks. JACK ALEXANDER reports on whether effective conservation attempts can ever be implemented without the ability to accurately track fish species in trade.

The African Wildlife Foundation has uncovered the figures behind the shocking numbers of 'trophy hunters' and the sanctioned trade in exporting dead and living animals out of the continent, reports LAURA BRIGGS

The nature of Britain's trade deals with the United States after Brexit raises serious concerns about the quality of food on supermarket shelves - and the influence of vested interests in the meat industry, reports LAWRENCE CARTER of EnergyDesk, Greenpeace.

Ecuador is the latest country to tear up 'free trade' agreements that have so far cost the country $21 billion in damages awarded to foreign companies by 'corporate courts', and yielded next to nothing in return, writes Nick Dearden. So the outgoing President Correa did the only sensible thing: in one of his final executive acts this month, he scrapped 16 toxic trade and investment treaties.

Mining was imposed on the Salvadoran people as a dream industry to aid development, create jobs and yield taxes to pay for schools and hospitals, write Ricardo Navarro & Sam Cossar-Gilber. But the reality was a nightmare of polluted water, stolen farmland, corporate violence, and murder. After a long campaign, El Salvador has just become the first country to ban all metal mining.

If there's one good thing about Trump, it's that he has put an end to the TPP and TTIP trade deals, right? Don't celebrate yet, writes Pete Dolack. There's another 'trade deal' waiting in the wings, TISA, and negotiators have been busy expanding its remit to include huge parts of TPP and TTIP, while giving free rein to the global behemoths of internet and finance to expand their monopolies.

The impending US-UK trade deal threatens the irreversible loss of public protections on health, safety, labour and environment in both countries, writes Stephen Devlin. Last week Trump signed an executive order forcing systemic corporate deregulation - and the UK's 'pro-business' government is all too keen to go along with it.

Leaving the European Union and reaching a trade deal with President Trump's US would create a perfect storm for UK farmers, writes Liberal Democrat Environment Spokesperson Kate Parminter, with new EU tariffs, reduced subsidies and drastically lower standards. The changes would also pose a serious threat to our natural environment, food quality and public health.

The green movement's squeamish social liberalism has left it to the political right to exploit public concerns about population and immigration, writes Colin Hines. We must make the progressive case for controlling our borders, and restricting not just migration but the free movement of goods, services and capital where it threatens environment, wellbeing and social cohesion.

It's now clear what place government ministers and senior officials want for the UK in a post-Brexit world, writes Mark Curtis - and it's not pretty! A new era of corporate 'free trade' colonialism looms, spearheaded by aid spending, with ramped-up arms exports to the world's most corrupt and repressive regimes, all backed up by military force to project the Britain's global financial interests.

The European Parliament just voted against referring CETA, the EU's toxic trade deal with Canada, for legal scrutiny by the European Court of Justice, write Kevin Smith & Jean Blaylock. But this astonishing decision comes with an important silver lining: 258 MEPs voted in favour, building a platform from which to defeat CETA altogether in the main vote in February.

Conventional economic analyses of trade tend only to discern the flows of money, writes NICK MEYNEN. But by also considering biophysical metrics - such as material and energy flows, and embodied water and land - ecological economists can identify the asymmetric flows of resources obscured by the apparent reciprocity of market prices.

Both Trump and Brexit can be explained by the failure of mainstream political elites to address the pain inflicted on ordinary citizens in the neoliberal era, write Helena Norberg-Hodge & Rupert Read. In the US and the UK, working class voters rightly rejected the corporate globalisation that has created so much poverty and insecurity. But the real solutions lie not in hatred, but relocalisation.

With the EU Parliament voting next week on CETA, the EU-Canada trade deal, 89 MEPs are demanding that its system of 'corporate courts' must first be verified by the European Court of Justice as compatible with existing EU law. But pro-CETA parliamentary leaders are trying to block all debate in the run-up to the vote.

President Obama faced reality last Friday when he conceded that the TPP would not be ratified by this Congress, write Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers. It was a massive victory for a people power: the culmination of a years-long campaign to expose the corporate depravity at TPP's heart, and turn it into political poison. Trump's victory was just the last straw that broke TPP's back.

This morning (28 October) in London, protesters dressed as Hallowe'en Zombies posed outside the European Commission office in London with a banner saying "Stop CETA rising from the dead - Toxic trade deals belong in the grave."

The city of Brussels, capital of Europe, has joined with other Belgian regions to defeat the CETA 'free trade' deal between the EU and Canada, in an unprecedented victory for civil society and campaigners against the EU's 'by the corporations, for the corporations' trade agenda.

The EU Council today blocked the progress of CETA, the Canada-EU trade deal, writes Nick Dearden. It's a dramatic reversal for the transatlantic 'free trade' agenda, with the unpopular TTIP US-EU agreement already close to death. But negotiators aren't giving up on their aim to push CETA through, no matter what. Our fight goes on!

A future Labour government will ban all fracking in the UK and drive forward a clean, affordable energy revolution, Barry Gardiner promised in his conference speech today. And it will openly negotiate 'Just Trade' agreements that respect the environment, health and labour, boosting small business not just multinational corporations.

The Trade in Services Agreement is a multilateral deal like TPP, TTIP and CETA, writes Zachary Davies Boren. But while the 50-nation negotiations are even more secretive, its impacts could be even greater: undermining national sovereignty; allowing only corporate regulation deemed 'necessary' by a panel of WTO lawyers; and allowing no rollback on trade liberalisation.

The UK's exit from the EU won't deliver for the 'victims of globalisation' whose votes were decisive in the referendum result, writes Pete Dolack. All the economic scenarios advanced to date envisage more of the 'free trade' and neoliberalism that has global empowered capital against communities and the well-paid jobs that once sustained them. Plus ca change ...

Depressed at the Breferendum result? So you might be, if you are bothered by the environment, social justice and a successful economy, writes Oliver Tickell. But it may never come to that. In fact it's just possible that the Brexit vote could deliver us a reformed 'peoples' EU' that includes the UK, under a progressive government led by Jeremy Corbyn. Here's how.

A leaked text from the 'Trade In Services Agreement' negotiations shows that TISA is set to unleash a massive wave of deregulation affecting social, environmental and financial standards, and force the privatisation of state-run enterprises, writes Pete Dolack. So it's not just TTIP, CETA and TPP we have to fight - TISA could be the biggest corporate power grab of them all.