Foreign Policy in Focus articles from December 1999

Foreign Policy in Focus archives from December 1999

WTO, Agricultural Deregulation and Food Security.
December 2, 1999... Can deregulated world markets ensure food security for the world? No negotiator of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) could honestly say that this was the first intent of the agreement. Rather, the agreement focused on how to...

Problems With Current U.S. Policy.
December 2, 1999... The AoA prescribes a model for agriculture that has basically only one dimension: increasing agricultural production for exports, importing what cannot be produced without tariff protection or subsidies to producers. This model is imperfectly...

Toward a New Foreign Policy.
December 2, 1999... Multilateral organizations need to be more responsive to the food security concerns of developing countries. To ensure that this happens, U.S. officials and policymakers should support the following two initiatives: First, there needs to...

WTO and Developing Countries.(Brief Article)
December 7, 1999... Crafting the declaration for the 3rd WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle was a contentious process. The industrialized countries proposed the inclusion of a host of new issues (in addition to the mandated talks about services and agriculture)...

Problems With Current U.S. Policy.(Brief Article)
December 7, 1999... As the world's leading country, the U.S. sets the agenda at the WTO. Tragically, while Washington exerts its power internationally, its interests are nationally based and are largely influenced by the myopic, profit-oriented aspirations of its...

Toward a New Foreign Policy.(Brief Article)
December 7, 1999... The U.S. negotiating agenda at the WTO, particularly with respect to its impact on developing countries, needs a major overhaul. A serious review of U.S. foreign trade policy should include the following considerations: Development, not...

WTO and Sustainable Development.(Brief Article)
December 9, 1999... The World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Seattle will be a defining moment for the world's commitment to sustainable development. It will also be a defining moment for U.S. leadership on sustainable development. The WTO...

Problems With Current U.S. Policy.(Brief Article)
December 9, 1999... The U.S. made a formal commitment to sustainable development at the Earth Summit in 1992 when it agreed to Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration. But despite the hoopla--and despite international agreement that "[h]umanity stands at a defining...

Toward a New Foreign Policy.
December 9, 1999... The U.S. should articulate a positive and compelling vision of what sustainable development would mean for the world's nations and integrate that vision into its domestic and foreign policy, including its trade policy. The United States should...

U.S.-EU Trade Issues.(Brief Article)
December 14, 1999... Investment and trade between the U.S. and the European Union (EU) have expanded exponentially since Europe first began to integrate its market in the 1950s. Currently the U.S. and EU account for more than one trillion dollars in two-way trade...

Problems With Current U.S. Policy.(Brief Article)
December 14, 1999... The main sites of discord in U.S.-EU trade fall into three categories: The perennial issue of agriculture and the related reform of the EU'S Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Reform of CAP has been sluggish, despite the pressing need to do...

Toward a New Foreign Policy.(Brief Article)
December 14, 1999... The New Transatlantic Agenda spawned a transatlantic business dialogue, but it has failed to produce an effective labor dialogue. Consumer and environmental groups are just beginning to be heard. The U.S. and EU should counter this asymmetrical...

China in the WTO: The Debate.
December 16, 1999... (Editors' Note: Foreign Policy In Focus has on several previous occasions produced policy briefs or reports supporting granting China permanent normal trading status and WTO membership. Neither of FPIF's sponsoring institutions, IRC and IPS,...

Problems With Current U.S. Policy.
December 16, 1999... The AFL-CIO, several other labor unions, and numerous human rights, fair trade, and environmental NGOs quickly came out against the U.S.-China agreement. If implemented, Chinas entry into the WTO will impose little adjustment on the U.S., but...

Toward a New Foreign Policy.(Brief Article)
December 16, 1999... As a WTO member, the U.S. government should support China's petition to join this international trade organization. And the U.S. Congress should end the discriminatory annual review of the normal trading relations with China by granting it NTR...

The China-WTO Debate: Dissenting Voices within the United States.
December 16, 1999... The U.S. - China agreement has stirred heated discussion and much opposition in the United States among progressives from labor, human rights, and environmental organizations, China policy analysts and academics, and Chinese dissidents. The...