Another Obama-Abe Summit has come and gone.  It’s time to pack up the good china and bring out the boxing gloves.  The same pattern led up to this Summit as last year.  Overselling hype until the reality of the continuing impasses precluded anything other than a declaration of progress and exhortations for closure of a trade negotiation claimed to be in its “final stages”.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s comments to the OECD after the 2014 Summit were virtually identical.  He said:

“Negotiations are also in their final phase on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement…” and “Japan and the United States will act in co-operation to accelerate negotiations further towards the early conclusion of the negotiations by the 12 participating countries as a whole.”

Sound familiar?  This is déjà vu all over again – Groundhog Day for trade negotiators on a grand scale.

Read more here: http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2015/05/07/trans-pacific-partnership-summits-groundhog-day/#.Vld_5narSUk

Free trade in agriculture is a Holy Grail often espoused by those who do not understand the complexities of agricultural production or the extent of rules-breaking in global markets for farm products.  It was not an accident that trade in agriculture was largely outside the GATT rules-based global trading system until 1994.

The brave experiment of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture has encountered considerable difficulty in building on initial progress.  Key players are unwilling to adopt new disciplines. Add to this the fact that rules about subsidies and disciplines are written to accommodate the practices of the deep-pocketed subsidizers.  Regional and Plurilateral Agreements cannot address these problems because they require multilateral solutions.

Even long-established free trade agreements are not immune to serious distortions resulting from the big vs. little game.  Take, for example, the long running dispute over US Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) Rules.  While it is difficult to argue against the desirability or legitimacy of providing consumer information (in this case, labelling) – this is not an unfettered right, particularly not when the workings of the US system under dispute are seen to adversely skew the market in favour of using domestic livestock at the expense of imported livestock.  Canada and Mexico have experienced considerable disruption and damage to their exports of live swine and beef cattle due to the US measures.  The dispute has been dragging on since 2009.  The aggregate damage to Canadian beef cattle and hog producers already exceeds $2.5 billion.

Read more at: http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2014/12/12/outing-the-global-agricultural-trade-cheats/#.VleAPXarSUk

hief negotiators representing the nations working on the stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal have resumed their efforts in Washington this week to generate something like real momentum in the talks.

At any rate, we should see some kind of progress in Washington this week. A few more routine boilerplate chapters may be closed, or essentially closed. But don’t expect major breakthroughs; Japan’s December 14 election makes them basically impossible.

Here are the sticking points — the issues on which agreement continues to elude negotiators:

• Market access for agriculture
• The environment
• State-owned enterprises
• Intellectual property (pharmaceuticals)
• The automotive trade
• Labour issues

Read more at:  http://ipolitics.ca/2014/12/11/trans-pacific-partnership-state-of-play/

A leaked partial text of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is causing an awful lot of fuss — as much for what’s not in it (as leaked) as for what is. But trade agreements are all about the details — and there simply aren’t enough details in this leak to make an assessment.

Why did the leak originate in Germany? Why not? Clearly, Germany does not favour investor-state dispute settlement, which operates independent of a nation’s court system. That hostility drove the leak. A desire for full and open public debate made early public disclosure of relevant parts of the text inevitable.

The deal is not really done until it is approved by the EU Council. And the text which will be approved eventually likely won’t be the same as what has been leaked. There will be fewer blank pages, for starters; the leaked document is full of holes and is missing the all-important annexes.

Read more at: http://ipolitics.ca/2014/08/14/the-canada-eu-trade-deal-is-headed-for-choppy-waters/

The final definitive Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), eagerly awaited since the Agreement in Principle was signed nine months ago, appears to have hit a rough patch.

News from Berlin suggest that Germany will not accept the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in CETA as they currently stand. Nor would such provisions be accepted in negotiations of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and USA.

Anti-corporate activists around the world are declaring victory, though perhaps a bit prematurely. Neither CETA nor TTIP are damaged beyond repair. But German concerns and demands cannot be ignored.

Why has this crisis emerged now? In fact, this is not a new position for Germany. It has made quite clear on several occasions it did not support the inclusion of Investor-State Dispute Settlement in the TTIP.

Read more at: http://ipolitics.ca/2014/07/27/germany-throws-down-gauntlet-in-ceta-investor-state-negotiations/

“The message is that Germany … is not going to submit itself to NAFTA Type Chapter 11 investor state arbitration,” trade consultant Peter Clark said.

“In their view there is nothing wrong with German courts and foreigners should not have different rights than Germans.”

Read more at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-and-eu-may-have-to-return-to-bargaining-table-experts-suggest/article19797114/