Some dates get burned in our memories. One date that pops up for me each year is November 17, the day the U.S. Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) back in 1993. Now, 23 years later, NAFTA is as controversial as ever.
Today is a Latin America wide day of action against the disastrous effects so-called Free Trade Agreements have had in undermining governments and the will of the people. Below is a public statement from the organizing groups, translated into English by IATP's Karen Hansen-Kuhn:
PUBLIC STATEMENT
Barack Obama continues to claim that he will manage to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) passed by Congress before the end of his presidential term on January 19, 2017.
This case study looks at a marketing initiative in two counties in Minnesota (MN), USA, which connects the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) with the Head Start Program run by the Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties (CAPRW) in Minnesota.
As international trade diplomats contemplate the latest move in their world—a formal complaint by the United States about China’s use of price supports for its farmers, lodged at the WTO last week—I am in Delhi to present IATP’s most recent findings of U.S. agricultural commodity dumping in export markets.
As the 43rd session of the UN Committee on Food Security meets in Rome this week they will finalize the negotiated draft recommendations on “connecting smallholders with markets”, developed with inputs from several hundreds of civil society organizations, including IATP. It has been a long process to get here.
Originally posted on Foreign Policy in Focus on October 12, 2016
Translated into Spanish by Alejandro Villamar and published by ALAI (Agencia Latino Americana de Información)
