[Ip-health] A bunch of business groups' statements on CAFTA

[ds20@uow.edu.au]

Dear Mike
I am little confused about these Free Trade Agreements. Are
they true agreements between sovereign nations taking into
account mutual benefits or an imposed regimes that we are
witnessing in Iraq? What is the benefit the smaller countries
are getting? Few scredriver industries from Japan and Taiwan!
After ten years, NAFTA has not done much to Mexico's progress
adn Mexico was one of the better Latin American states with
significant oil reserve. What is Singapore going to get? It
was a totally open state? All we see is the exceptionally
stringent patenting monoplies and if you link it with the
internationalization of US dollar, I dont see any gain at all
to these nations except an opportunity to act as an agent of
the USTR in international negotiations. We have seen these
examples in Edouardo Motta from Mexico and Gopalan from
Singapore. Both were placed as Chairman of the TRIPS Council
to rewrite the TRIPS Agreement through Para 6 Solution of
30th August, 2003. Can anybody throw some light on the
reasons behnind such formation of free trade areas?
Daya Shanker