What Oxfam is Doing
Oxfam is advocating for a new trade policy, which spreads the benefits of trade in developing countries by placing development at its core.
In particular, the US must strengthen the multilateral trading system, prioritize the completion of a pro-development trade deal at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and expand trade preference programs, including passage of legislation providing for duty-free and quota-free market access for all Least Developed Countries (LDCs). This would send a clear signal of a break with old, flawed trade policies focusing on bilateral Free Trade Agreements.
As trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization fail to make significant progress, the US has turned to bilateral and regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) as a means of forging new markets for US goods and services. But FTAs in the Americas, Africa, and Asia could devastate millions of poor people. Oxfam is working to defeat such trade agreements that threaten people's rights to: livelihoods, local development, and access to medicines.
More specifically, Oxfam is calling for:
- Restarting the WTO talks and getting the Doha Development Agenda back on track to make global trade more open while addressing developing country needs. The new US administration should take leadership early on to move forward WTO negotiations on the basis of the original Doha agenda, thereby reaffirming the priority of the multilateral system and the imperative of placing development needs at the heart of the agenda.
- Restoring Bolivia’s designation as a beneficiary country under the Andean Trade Preference program (ATPA/ATPDEA). President Bush recently took unprecedented action to suspend such status, meaning that tens of thousands of working people and the poor, who have benefited from employment generated through Bolivia’s diversification of exports to the United States, could lose their livelihoods.
- Legislation providing trade preferences to all LDCs while also improving upon existing preference programs. Congress should make it a priority to enact a bill to provide duty-free and quota-free access to the US market for all LDCs, while authorizing funds for trade capacity building to promote small businesses, agricultural development and poverty reduction. An example of such a bill is the New Partnership for Development Act (H.R. 3905).
- An end to bilateral free trade agreements, such as the one proposed with Colombia, because they impose far-reaching rules that undermine development.