The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that govern international trade in cooperation with the United Nations System. The WTO is the world's largest international economic organization, with 164 member states representing over 98% of global trade and global GDP.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas, excluding Cuba. Negotiations to establish the FTAA ended in failure, however, with all parties unable to reach an agreement by the 2005 deadline they had set for themselves.
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971, and is currently the world's largest coffeehouse chain.
The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of anti-globalization protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1999. The Conference was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations.
Howard D. Schultz is an American businessman and author who was the chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000, from 2008 to 2017, and interim CEO from 2022 to 2023. Schultz owned the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team from 2001 to 2006.
Medea Benjamin is an American political activist who, along with Jodie Evans and others, co-founded Code Pink. She also co-founded, along with her husband Kevin Danaher, the fair trade advocacy group Global Exchange. Benjamin was the Green Party nominee in the 2000 United States Senate election in California, running under the name Medea Susan Benjamin.
Pascal Lamy is a French political consultant and businessman. He was the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 1 September 2005 to 1 September 2013 for 8 years. In April 2009, WTO members reappointed Lamy for a second 4-year term, beginning on 1 September 2009. He was then succeeded by Roberto Azevêdo. Pascal Lamy was also European Commissioner for Trade for 5 years, from 13 September 1999 to 22 November 2004 and is an advisor for the transatlantic think-tank European Horizons, as well as currently serving as the Honorary President of the Paris-based think tank, Notre Europe.
Global Exchange was founded in 1988 and is an advocacy group, human rights organization, and a 501(c)(3) organization, based in San Francisco, California, United States. The group defines its mission as, "to promote human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice around the world." Global Exchange deals with a wide range of issues, ranging from the U.S. war in Iraq to worker abuse and fair trade issues.
The WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 was the third Ministerial-level meeting of the World Trade Organization, convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, over the course of four days, from Tuesday, 30 November 1999 to Friday, 3 December 1999. Anti-globalization activists organized large-scale protests of the meeting, sometimes known as the Battle of Seattle. Direct action tactics forced the WTO Ministerial Conference to begin late on 30 November and contributed to the meeting ending without agreement on 3 December.
Coffee is a popular beverage and an important commodity. Tens of millions of small producers in developing countries make their living growing coffee. Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world daily. Over 90 percent of coffee production takes place in developing countries — mainly South America — while consumption happens primarily in industrialized economies. There are 25 million small producers who rely on coffee for a living worldwide. In Brazil, where almost a third of the world's coffee is produced, over five million people are employed in the cultivation and harvesting of over three billion coffee plants; it is a more labor-intensive culture than alternative cultures of the same regions, such as sugar cane or cattle, as its cultivation is not automated, requiring frequent human attention.
Global Trade Watch (GTW) is a consumer advocacy organization that focuses on trade policy. Founded in 1995 by attorney Lori Wallach, GTW is a division of U.S.-based think tank Public Citizen. GTW advocates for a greater public role in international, federal, state and local policy-making, and for a different set of policies and institutions than those governing the current model of globalization. In 2022, Melinda St. Louis succeeded Wallach as director of GTW.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) is an American think tank that specializes in economic policy. Based in Washington, D.C. CEPR was co-founded by economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot in 1999.
Mark Alan Weisbrot is an American economist and columnist. He is co-director with Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. Weisbrot is President of Just Foreign Policy, a non-governmental organization dedicated to reforming United States foreign policy.
Black Gold is a 2006 documentary film that follows the efforts of an Ethiopian coffee union manager as he travels the world to obtain a better price for his workers' coffee beans. The film was directed and produced by Marc James Francis and Nick Francis from Speakit Films, and co-produced by Christopher Hird. It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Since its creation in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has worked to maintain and develop international trade. As one of the largest international economic organizations, it has strong influence and control over trading rules and agreements, and thus has the ability to affect a country's economy immensely. The WTO policies aim to balance tariffs and other forms of economic protection with a trade liberalization policy, and to "ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible". Indeed, the WTO claims that its actions "cut living costs and raise standards, stimulate economic growth and development, help countries develop, [and] give the weak a stronger voice." Statistically speaking, global trade has consistently grown between one and six percent per annum over the past decade, and US$38.8 billion were allocated to Aid for Trade in 2016.
Rufus Hawkins Yerxa is an American lawyer and former U.S. government and international official. He is currently a Senior Advisor with the global consulting firm McClarty Associates. He served as Deputy United States Trade Representative during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations, and served for 11 years as Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). From 2016 to 2021 he was President of the National Foreign Trade Council.
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is an international non-profit research and advocacy organization that promotes sustainable food, farm, and trade systems. IATP has offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Washington, D.C., Geneva, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany.
Economic globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two others being political globalization and cultural globalization, as well as the general term of globalization. Economic globalization refers to the widespread international movement of goods, capital, services, technology and information. It is the increasing economic integration and interdependence of national, regional, and local economies across the world through an intensification of cross-border movement of goods, services, technologies and capital. Economic globalization primarily comprises the globalization of production, finance, markets, technology, organizational regimes, institutions, corporations, and people.
Starbucks, an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain, was the subject of multiple controversies. Public and employee criticism against the company has come from around the world, including a wide range issues from tax avoidance in Europe, anti-competitive practices in the United States, human rights issues in multiple countries and labor issues involving union busting, questions about pay equity and ethics in partnerships in Africa.
Richard L. Bernal, OJ was a Jamaican economist and diplomat. Bernal served as the Jamaican Ambassador to the United States from 1991 to 2001, simultaneously holding the post of Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the Organization of American States. As of March 2016, Bernal held the post of Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Affairs at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Bernal was a Member of the Order of Jamaica. In 2018, he was made a Professor of Practice (PoP) in international economic policy at The UWI. Bernal was a Member of the Leadership Council of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He was also a member of the Board of Directors at Laspau, Harvard University.
