In The News

Summer of Setbacks

Ernesto Zedillo August 1, 2007
Summer of 2007 may well be remembered for a string of bad financial news: increasing numbers of homeowners in the US struggling to pay home mortgages, the decline of the US dollar, and climbing oil prices as conflict and tension linger in the Middle East. Yet the world economy flourishes despite shocks in foreign exchange and the debt markets. Ernesto Zedillo, director of Yale Center for the...

The Double Edge of Globalization

Nayan Chanda June 28, 2007
Activists have long accused global corporations of being bad environmental citizens. But the problems of climate change and deforestation are part of a larger phenomenon, in which globalization is but one factor among many. As Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal, discusses in his new book “Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization,” international...

Global Trade Talks Collapse Over Agricultural Subsidies

Carter Dougherty June 25, 2007
Another attempt to revive the Doha round of negotiations, the goal of which is a global trade agreement for reducing poverty in small developing nations, collapsed once again. The US and Europe resist slashing their own agricultural subsidies as much as developing nations, including India and Brazil, would prefer. Brazil and India refuse to open their markets to goods from the industrialized...

Brazil to Break Merck AIDS Drug Patent to Lower Price

Katia Cortes May 17, 2007
Brazil’s president signed an order to override the patent of Merck and Company’s signature AIDS drug, thereby opening the field to lower-cost producers to sell generic versions of the drug. Citing a 2001 World Trade Organization ruling permitting countries to overrule drug patents in cases of national health emergencies, Brazil rejected Merck’s offer to reduce the price of Efavirenz, part of an...

Bush and Democrats in Accord on Trade Deals

Steven R. Weisman May 11, 2007
After weeks of negotiation, the Bush administration and congressional leaders have worked out an agreement on how to include environmental and worker protections in trade deals. “The unusual agreement, which came after weeks of negotiations, would guarantee workers the right to organize, ban child labor and prohibit forced labor in trading-partner countries,” writes journalist Steven Weisman. “...

Save the WTO From the Doha Round

Ernesto Zedillo May 9, 2007
The World Trade Organization launched the Doha Round of negotiations to ease trade restrictions and reduce poverty. Attempts to revive the negotiations – stalled since summer of 2006 as the world’s wealthiest nations quarrel over how to end agricultural subsidies – continue to be stymied. The next development, predicts Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization...

EU-US Summit: Hands Across the Ocean

José Manuel Barroso April 27, 2007
Despite persistent fears in the West about emerging competition from developing economies, a more immediate concern for Americans and Europeans is their own trade relationship. While the people of the European Union and the US together make up barely 10 percent of the world's population, bilateral business between the two accounts for fully 40 percent of all international trade. That is why...