WTO meetings begin today in Hong Kong

Dec 13th, 2005 11:00 AM UTC
By Shannon

Check out today’s Business Week
article, EU,
U.S. push aid to
help poor nations to learn more about what is happening in trade talks at the
WTO meetings this week.

With trade talks mired in a stalemate, the United
States and EU on Tuesday sought to highlight a
positive initiative by urging trading partners to help the world’s poorest
nations with money to strengthen their trading capabilities.
The EU announced
it would boost its annual contribution for so-called “Aid-for-Trade” by euro1
billion (US$1.18 billion) by the year 2010, bringing its total to euro2 billion
(US$2.4 billion) a year.
U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman was also to
unveil additional U.S. measures Wednesday as part of an
effort by the World Trade Organization to provide money for poor countries to
build trade infrastructure and other services to help them better compete in
world markets.
Developing countries say they need rich-world aid so they can
strengthen their ports, roads, schools and bridges. It would also help them
implement new WTO rules, which are often expensive, and help compensate for the
loss of the preferential trade access of their products into rich world
markets.

Click here
to read the full article

TAGS: The ONE Blog