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Articles on World Trade Organization

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Governments spend US$22 billion a year helping the fishing industry empty our oceans. This injustice must end

Governments all over the world are propping up overfishing. Now scientists have penned an open letter calling on trade ministers to implement stricter regulations against harmful fisheries subsidies.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 16, 2022, including electric vehicle subsidies with ‘buy American’ rules. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty

The US broke global trade rules to try to fix climate change – to finish the job, it has to fix the trade system

Joe Biden’s ‘buy American’ effort with EVs likely violated World Trade Organization rules that the US helped create. The US has an opportunity now to update the system – if it’s willing to take it.
The World Trade Organization reached an agreement on fisheries subsidies, prohibiting member countries from funding illegal fishing and fishing of overexploited stocks at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva on June 17. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo/Keystone via AP)

We have a deal. Can we now talk about some not-so-harmful fisheries subsidies?

There is a need for nuanced discussions around the role of fisheries subsidies — even those that may be nominally harmful — to avoid further inequity and marginalization of small-scale fishers.
India’s minister of commerce Piyush Goyal and WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala celebrate the end of the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference. Fabrice Coffrini/Pool/Keystone via AP

World Trade Organization steps back from the brink of irrelevance – but it’s not fixed yet

Meeting for the first time since 2017, the WTO’s highest decision-making body managed to agree on some things – including its first treaty with environmental protection as the objective.
Global Justice campaigners in London stand by fake coffins to highlight global COVID-19 deaths. If pharma companies waived intellectual property rights, it would be easier for low- and middle-income countries to access COVID-19 vaccines. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

We still need a vaccine patent waiver, but not the one on offer at the World Trade Organization meeting

Waiving patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines and drugs is still crucial to ensure access globally, but the waiver on the table at the June World Trade Organization meeting doesn’t do the job.
Containers are seen stacked at a port in Qingdao in China’s eastern Shandong province on Jan. 14, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images

The ‘China shock’ of trade in the 2000s reverberates in US politics and economics – and warns of the dangers for fossil fuel workers

Large-scale job losses in the US due to trade with China will lead to enduring demographic and political aftershocks without the implementation of policies that promote widespread job growth.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing in December 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Why have Canada and Australia taken such a different approach to China?

Canada is conspicuously absent from the new security pact signed between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia on China. Is it time for Canada to take a page from the Australian playbook on managing China?
Anita Anand, Canada’s minister of public services and procurement, opens a box with some of the first 500,000 of the two million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses that Canada secured last March through a deal with the Serum Institute of India. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio - POOL

Canada is virtue signalling while waffling on global access to COVID-19 vaccines

Despite some public virtue signalling, the Canadian government is not doing all it can to improve global access to COVID-19 vaccines. Canada has yet to announce its position on the WTO patent waiver.

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