Free trade agreements

Agroecology Uprooted Episode Four: Food and Power

Food is about more than just the calories we need to survive. The expansion of corporate-controlled industrial agriculture has meant the loss of traditional knowledge, diverse genetic resources, and communities’ power to control their own food systems. 

Reflections from Cameroon and WTO MC14

In March, IATP Executive Director Sophia Murphy traveled to Cameroon for the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference. While the WTO still struggles to adapt and advance negotiations between member nations, proposals from civil society organizations held promise for new ways to approach trade in a changing world.

IATP and IPS comment on the intersection of climate change, food systems, and human rights

The challenges to our climate and food systems intersect in important ways, not only because of the impacts of erratic weather on food production or the emissions generated by agricultural production, but also because of the ways corporate power both exacerbates those problems and undermines the solutions. These are not just technical issues but fundamentally political choices. 

Removing trade policy obstacles to agroecology and seed sovereignty

Central to the survival of small and mid-scale farmers is their right to save, use, exchange and sell their own seeds — that is, what agroecology advocates have come to recognize as their seed sovereignty.

Battling for Farmers' Seed Systems: UPOV 91 and Trade Agreements

This memo is an attempt to draw attention to the international policy-level challenges impacting Farmers’ Seed Systems broadly, but with a focus on communities in the Global South, and on how the U.S. and its seeds companies use free-trade agreements to undermine the policy space available for farmers to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seeds.

Trade pressures threaten Kenya’s small-scale livestock producers

A new report commissioned by IATP and BIBA-Kenya analyzes Kenya's livestock sector and highlights increasing pressure from U.S. trade flows and Big Ag interests.

EU-Mercosur Agreement: Old pledges, new potential impacts for food systems and a just transition

This article by Maureen Santos will focus briefly on some of the implications on the final EUMA text negotiated between 2023 and 2024 called the Brasília Package, while remaining strongly critical about the overall agreement.

Trade Basics: Tariffs 101

Tariffs have been in the news a lot lately. This FAQ explains what tariffs are and how they can be used as a tool in trade policy, or disrupt economies and international relations when misused.

Swimming against the tide

Since the beginning of NAFTA in 1994, Mexico has experienced a dramatic deterioration in its ability to grow its own food. U.S. agricultural dumping of cheap exports has contributed to Mexico’s loss of food self-sufficiency.

Unfair U.S. trade practices undermine Mexico’s food self-sufficiency efforts

MINNEAPOLIS—Today, a new report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Timothy A. Wise documents how the United States’ practice of agricultural dumping of cheap exports into Mexico has hampered the Mexican government’s efforts to improve food self-sufficiency.