Author: admin@csend.org

Trade Investment and Climate Change (TRI-CC)

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Inputs made by Prof. Raymond Saner at the Trade Investment and Climate Change (TRI-CC): Searching for Progress in Key Areas on 13 October, 2011, Geneva, WHO Headquarters. This one-day event covered new research and thinking on green industrial policy, competitiveness and leakage, and the potential role of the trade community.

Prof. Saner highlighted the “regime failure” in the context of global trade and climate change challenges and called for urgent actions. He went on to proposes a new set of green WTO agreements that would encompass TRIMS, TRIPS and a trilateral plurilateral on energy, environment and trade & development. Details of this frame breaking policy proposal can be heard at here

Revisiting Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in light of promises made in the context the Doha Trade Negotiation Round

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Raymond Saner & Laura Paéz, CSEND policy paper, June 2005.

In 2002, nearly 30 WTO members pledged more than 30 Million Swiss Francs to ensure the achievement of the Doha Development Round (DDR). The pledged amount is meant to finance 514 capacity building actives listed in the WTO Annual Technical Assistance Plan (TAP). In addition, support is to be extended to 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) though the Integrated Framework (IF), to help them integrate trade policy into their development strategies. Concerns have arisen as to the scope, effectiveness and efficiency of the TAP and IF. While the activities planned are laudable, the authors question whether they can be achieved and suggest a fundamental reassessment of TAP and IF in order to fulfill the objectives of the DDR.

Article

Labour Rights as Human Rights: Evaluating the policy coherence of USA, EU and Australia through trade agreements and their participation in the Universal Periodic Review

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Raymond Saner, Angad Keith & Lichia Yiu

The purpose of this study is to find policy coherence, or lack thereof, in the labour provisions contained in the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) of the United States of America, the European Union and Australia when compared to their interactions in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Sessions with their trade partners and to the official trio of UPR documents made available during these sessions. Over the past decade these countries have entered into various free trade agreements with developing and developed countries alike. However, it is their trade agreements with developing countries that are of particular interest.

Article

GATS Financial Services Liberalization: How do OECD Members Schedules Impact Commercial Banking FDI?

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Recent efforts to lay out an international regulatory framework relevant for fi nancial services liberalization, consolidated under the aegis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and followed by the implementation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), have provided market access to commercial banks seeking establishment in an important group of countries.

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ISO 22000’s potential impact on world trade in agricultural products

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Hardly a day goes by without the media reporting on the difficult negotiations w i t h i n t h e Wo r l d Trade Organization (WTO) and the threat to international trade should there be no successful conclusion to the Doha Round.
The problem most often reported centers around market access for agricultural products from developing countries that cannot pass the prohibitively high level of tariffs of the industrialized countries.

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