Peter Gallagher

Australia’s offi­cial view of the appro­pri­ate level of pro­tec­tion against imported plant or ani­mal pests and dis­eases can be char­ac­terised as: “com­plete pro­tec­tion what­ever the cost”. Our trad­ing part­ners, nat­u­rally, find this hard to take; the Philip­pines raised its objec­tions[⇒ related story] last month. Now the Euro­pean Union has for­mally chal­lenged the pol­icy in the …

It’s easy enough to fall into the trap. In hot pur­suit of an argu­ment we some­times grasp at evi­dence that isn’t quite what it seems. http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004357.html”>Jane Galt has put an odd spin on the prob­a­ble WTO deal on patents and drugs ” The WTO has just cut a deal to let coun­tries that break patents, such …

I’ve argued this before[⇒ related story] on this site. I’ve now been asked by the Aus­tralian “National Farm­ers’ Federation(link to NFF website)”://www.nff.org.au to put the argu­ments briefly for dis­cus­sion by global farm indus­try lead­ers meet­ing dur­ing the Can­cún meet­ing of WTO. You are wel­come to help your­self to a “copy(link to PDF file, about 90k)”:http://www.petergallagher.com.au/assets/6reasons_web.pdf …

There’s only so much you can do with words. At some point, dis­agree­ments have to be resolved by some­one in charge agree­ing to make changes. This has finally started to hap­pen in Geneva bq. Trade nego­tia­tors gave up on attempts to nar­row dif­fer­ences over how to open up inter­na­tional trade and cre­ate a bind­ing global …

The “Insti­tute of Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Eco­nom­ics and Law(link to the Insti­tute website)”:http://www.iibel.adelaide.edu.au/ at Ade­laide Uni­ver­sity con­ducts a unique global poll of WTO insid­ers includ­ing Geneva nego­tia­tors, senior gov­ern­ment offi­cials and ana­lysts in which it tests trends in the com­mu­nity that com­prises World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion deci­sion makers.

Its impor­tant to under­stand the impact of the US and EU ‘joint’ pro­posal[⇒ related story] for the future of world agri­cul­ture trade. Although it has been crit­i­cised[⇒ related story] from all sides, the paper has already been incor­po­rated into the pro­posed “draft declaration(link to story in the Globe and Mail)”:http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030825/IBTRAD/TPBusiness/International put for­ward by the Chair­man …

In a “speech(link to ‘Australia’s Eco­nomic Mir­a­cle’, pdf file about 100k)”:http://www.pc.gov.au/research/speeches/cs20030801/cs20030801.pdf to a post-graduate eco­nom­ics forum, Gary Banks (Chair­man of the “Aus­tralian Pro­duc­tiv­ity Commission”:http://www.pc.gov.au) out­lines the nature and ori­gins of pro­duc­tiv­ity gains in the Aus­tralian econ­omy since the early 1990’s that has seen our out­put per per­son climb from 16th in the OECD to 8th …