Free Trade Agreements

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In the past two days, two more countries – Peru and Saudi Arabia – ratified the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).  Their ratification followed Mexico and Hondurus, who ratified the TFA earlier this month.

The submission of instruments of acceptance from Peru and Saudi Arabia means that more than 80 percent of the

spirits4The European Union (EU) has requested consultations, a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute proceeding, with Colombia to address what it believes are discriminatory practices against spirits being imported from the EU into Colombia. The EU says that Colombian authorities treat imported alcoholic beverages from the EU in a manner that is inconsistent with the WTO.

Ostensibly, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in international trade agreements create a necessary judicial mechanism which empowers international investors to bring actions against host states who act arbitrarily, to the detriment of the international investment.  ISDS has, however, long been criticized as a non-transparent, privately run judicial system through which wealthy investment entities can extract

The Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam), which among other things, contains measures to lower trade barriers such as tariffs.

For more information about the TPP see our previous post, 

The Story

Asia-Pacific Region
Copyright: kgtoh / 123RF Stock Photo

After many years of negotiations, the 12 countries making up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam) finally reached a trade agreement on October 4, 2015.  Note that the