Background
| World Social Forum Conference on Transnational Corporations by Joshua Karliner and Ted Lewis, CorpWatch and Global Exchange February 1st, 2002 This paper was circulated prior to the Second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in February 2002. It was used as a point of departure to spark debate during a panel on transnational corporations, that CorpWatch co-chaired with Global Exchange, another San Francisco-based group. |
| LOTIS Minutes LOTIS November 12th, 2001 The minutes below are from a series of secret meetings between top corporate executives in the Euro-American business world and the UK's primary trade negotiators. Between April 1999 and February 2001 the Liberalization and Trade in Services (LOTIS) committee held a series of private meetings in which the discussed strategy to impose a pro-business agenda on the WTO rules governing services. |
| WTO Confidential Memo World Trade Organization Secretariat November 12th, 2001 This confidential memo from the World Trade Organization Secretariat shows that after a series of secret meetings with top business executives that European trade negotiators had accepted the corporate position on a key provision in the General Agreement on Trade in Services. |
| How Corporations Shape US Trade Policy CorpWatch November 6th, 2001 One of the ways that corporations work hand in glove with US policymakers on trade issues is through the Industry Sector Advisory Committees (ISAC). The idea is to guarantee that the private sector and government work closely together during trade negotiations. |
| Terrorism and Free Trade by Eric Laursen, VillageVoice.com November 5th, 2001 Barely a week after terrorists reduced the World Trade Center to rubble, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick launched a full-dress rescue mission on behalf of one of the Bush Administration's pet projects: the expansion of the president's powers to negotiate trade agreements. |
| The Players in the GATS Negotiations by Tony Clarke, CorpWatch October 25th, 2001 The U.S. Coalition of Service Industries is the top lobby group in the November WTO meeting in Qatar. The table below looks at 12 heavy hitters in the 67 member Coalition. |
| NAFTA's Investor ''Rights'': A Corporate Dream, A Citizen Nightmare by Mary Bottari, Multinational Monitor April 1st, 2001 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) includes an array of new corporate investment rights and protections that are unprecedented in scope and power. NAFTA allows corporations to sue the national government of a NAFTA country in secret arbitration tribunals if they feel that a regulation or government decision affects their investment in conflict with these new NAFTA rights. |
| The FTAA and the Threat to Democracy Council of Canadians On April 20, the leaders from 34 countries of the Western Hemisphere will meet in Quebec City to negotiate the most far-reaching trade agreement in history -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). |
| Chronology of FTAA Negotiations Stop the FTAA Here is a chronology of FTAA Negotiations. |
| From APEC to Ashes by Walden Bello with Marissa de Guzman, Focus on Trade September 1st, 1999 It has been ten years since the creation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). What started out as a lofty dream of encouraging unity and interdependence among Asia Pacific countries is now at the crossroads. It appears to be headed nowhere with no clear vision of what it intends to achieve. |
| WORLD: Multinationals and the World Trade Organisation World Development Movement September 1st, 1999 Governments of the rich countries, heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists, have given sweeping rights to multinational companies. These rights are being strictly enforced by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), with disastrous consequences for people around the world. |
| Maquiladoras at a Glance CorpWatch June 30th, 1999 What exactly are maquiladoras? What do they produce and do they pay a living wage? Which companies operate on the border? These are just a few of the questions answered in our fact sheet and map. |
| Health and Environmental Issues by Rachel Kamel and Anya Hoffman, The Maquiladora Reader (American Friends Service Committee) June 30th, 1999 Maquiladora workers voice constant fears about their safety on the job. In the electronics industry alone, workers are exposed to a variety of substances which include xylene, trichloroethylene, zinc and lead oxides, and nitric acid. Not only electronics assembly but other industries as well expose workers to the materials used in thinners, paints, solvents, resins, solders, dyes, flux, and acetone. Exposure to such substances without proper protection can cause cancer, reproductive problems, skin diseases, vision problems, respiratory impairments, gastrointestinal and nervous disorders, and headaches and fatigue. |
| Mexican Evolution for Women's Rights by Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor June 8th, 1999 Guadalupe Aguirre had recently moved to Ciudad Juarez, a US-Mexico border city known for a NAFTA-fed manufacturing boom -- and dozens of murders of poor working women -- and she was frightened and frustrated. |
| MEXICO: Girl's Murder Sad Symbol of Corporate Power, Child Labor, Female Exploitation on the Border by Dan La Botz, Mexican Labor News and Analysis March 2nd, 1999 Irma Angelica Rosales, a 13-year-old girl, was raped and murdered on February 16 in the town of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, just a cross the border from El Paso, Texas. Her very brief life and violent death symbolize everything that is wrong with the social system which U.S. multinational corporations and the U.S. and Mexican government have created on our common border. |
| Building Grassroots Globalization by Joshua Karliner, CorpWatch December 1st, 1997 The old 1960s slogan ''think globally, act locally'' is no longer sufficient as a guiding maxim. Rather, civil society -- popular movements, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, academics, doctors, lawyers, artists and others across the world -- must confront the essential paradox and challenge of the 21st century by developing ways of thinking and acting both locally and globally at the same time. |
| Codes of Conduct and Carmelita: The Real Gap by Gerard Greenfield, Asia Monitor Resource Center September 22nd, 1997 During a two-week period in September 1996, U.S. Department of Labor Officials travelled to six countries -- the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India and the Philippines -- as part of a major study of codes of conduct in the garment industry. The outcome was a report, The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct: A Solution to the International Child Labor Problem? (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 1996). |
| U.S.-Africa Trade Policy: In Whose Interest? by Tetteh Hormeku, African Agenda (Third World Network Africa Secretariat) September 11th, 1997 To outward appearances, Africa's big moment at the Denver Summit of the Eight in June was President Clinton's trade and investment initiative, offering expanded trade concessions to African countries to support further market oriented economic reforms. |
| Working Conditions in Sports Shoe Factories in China Asia Monitor Resource Centre and Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee September 1st, 1997 This report was produced by two non-governmental organizations in Hong Kong: the Asia Monitor Resource Centre and the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee. During 1995 and again in 1997, we examined workers' rights and working conditions in the factories of five major subcontractors producing sports shoes in China: Yue Yuen, Nority International, KTP Holdings and Wellco. These factories produce shoes for Nike and Reebok. The first two are Taiwanese companies with factories in southern China, while KTP Holdings is a Hong Kong-based company and Wellco is a South Korean-owned company. |
| WORLD: Tobacco's Impact on the International Community San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition and the San Francisco Tobacco Free Project June 30th, 1997 According to the World Health Organization, in 25 years tobacco related disease will kill 8.4 million people annually -- more than 3.5 times the number of people it kills today. Most of this increase will occur in developing countries where the Tobacco Industry has been working hard to open markets to promote its product, especially to women and youth, to ensure its profits. |