STWR - Share The World's Resources

The problem with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is that trade isn't really 'free', and North America - at least as portrayed in the summits - doesn't actually exist, writes Laura Carlsen.

The one-size-fits-all model of development pushed by the ongoing Doha round of WTO negotiations is against the interests of small farmers, agricultural labourers and livlihood security, writes Mritiunjoy Mohanty - and the solution is to place development back into their hands, as demonstrated by the problems of NAFTA policies in Mexico.

An opposition to 'free trade' is not sufficient to challenge the deeper causes of the world situation - and a greater alternative is needed than simply proposals for 'fair trade', writes Shamus Cooke.

The IMF's response to the global food crisis - more loans and more neoliberal conditions - is set to worsen the dire crisis

'The imf is back," declared the International Monetary Fund's managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, at its annual spring meeting earlier this month in Washington. And not a moment too soon either. 

“Free trade” has produced some of the most contentious political debates of our times. In a famous April 2000 article in the New Republic, economist Joseph Stiglitz argued, “Economic policy is today perhaps the most important part of America's interaction with the rest of the world. And yet the culture of international economic policy in the world's most powerful democracy is not democratic.”

Have things changed at the International Monetary Fund? Or is the world just witnessing yet another in a long series of global economic double standards?