Free Republic

The Healthcare Annex, according to WikiLeaks, “seeks to regulate state schemes for medicines and medical devices. It forces healthcare authorities to give big pharmaceutical companies more information about national decisions on public access to medicine, and grants corporations greater powers to challenge decisions they perceive as harmful to their interests.” Dr. Deborah Gleeson, who gave professional review and analysis to WikiLeaks said, “The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high-quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.” Gleeson added, “Nor does this do...

This coming Monday (17.02.2014), EU trade chief Karel de Gucht and his US counterpart Michael Froman are scheduled to meet in Washington to discuss the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a transatlantic free trade area. They are expected to make a political assessment of the past three rounds of US-EU trade talks and to discuss the upcoming fourth round of negotiations in March. The pact would unify standards and licensing procedures across a EU-US trade zone and would waive tariffs on goods traded between the EU and the US. According to the Munich-based IFO institute, the treaty will create...

Further delay will hinder economic growth and cost jobsIt has been four years since the United States and Colombia signed a reciprocal trade agreement. Unfortunately, the agreement has yet to be implemented. In June 2007, then-President George W. Bush sent the agreement to Congress but the Democratic majority in the House refused to vote on it. The new Republican Majority in the House must ensure a vote on this agreement, as it will create U.S. jobs and make good on a promise to an important ally. Passing the agreement would create U.S. jobs by eliminating tariffs on U.S. exports to...

OUR OPINION: Obama, Democrats should support deal with close ally Now that leaders of the European Union have expressed interest in moving ahead with free trade talks with Colombia, lawmakers in Congress should rethink their own refusal to finalize the pending trade agreement with the strongest U.S. ally in South America. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues voted to put the deal on ice back in April, Rep. Rahm Emanuel suggested that a vote was still possible before the end of the year. Well, Mr. Emanuel, how about it? The Illinois congressman is now President-elect Obama's designated...

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - A U.S. free trade pact with Central America, already delayed by a legal wrangle, has run into further trouble at presidential elections in Costa Rica where voters punished the main pro-trade candidate. Costa Rica's electoral board began a recount on Tuesday of the vote from the weekend, which ended with a near dead heat despite opinion polls showing free trade advocate Oscar Arias would win easily. Arias, a former president who strongly backs the U.S.-Central American Free Agreement, or CAFTA, won just over 40 percent of votes on Sunday, on a par with main...