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Thursday October 13, 2022: The UK-based Transform Trade - People centred trade report and its associated legal research report – Foreign Investment, Human Rights and the Climate in the UK – Asymmetric Legal Protection – hit two powerful themes – people’s action is transforming international trade and can do much more; and British law enables British corporations to cruelly exploit ISDS in bilateral investment agreements for super profits.

Monday, October 10, 2022: This 41 minute podcast from the Conversation explains how an obscure investment provision in many trade agreements is being used by the fossil fuel sector to block action to cut carbon emissions.

October 4, 2022: The US Trade Representative Office has confirmed that it signed secrecy agreements with Australia and 12 other members of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in April 2022, after an FOI request revealed the secrecy agreement signed with New Zealand.

September 19, 2022: In 2017, the Colombian Constitutional Court decided in favour of local communities and to protect the Bruno River from an expansion of the huge Correjón open-pit thermal coal mine.

September 15, 2022: The first known Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) claim concerning COVID-19 pandemic-related regulation was registered by French airport operating companies ADP International and Vinci Airports in August 2021 against Chile. The companies are arguing that Chile’s decision to close its borders during the height of the pandemic cost them US$37 million.

September 12, 2022: Trade ministers from the 14 countries involved in the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum met in Los Angeles on Friday and published a more detailed statement of the negotiating objectives for the four pillars which aim to form a framework for trade and investment in the region.  

AFTINET MEDIA RELEASE                                                                                                                            

September 9, 2022

Forty-six community organisations from Australia and the region have endorsed a letter calling for greater transparency and rejection of failed past trade models as Ministers from 14 member countries of the Indo Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) meet in Los Angeles today. IPEF includes the US, Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Fiji.

September 8, 2022: Read Patricia Ranald's article in The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/british-investors-could-sue-australia-over-c...

September 5, 2022: Labor’s Trade Minster Senator Don Farrell declared over the weekend that he wanted the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement (A-UK FTA) ratified by the end of the year, despite the fact that the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) is yet to review it, and Labor is yet to test it against its own trade policy.

August 25, 2022: The Guardian reports that the Italian government has been ordered by an international tribunal to pay EUR190 million plus interest, a likely total of EUR250 m, (A$360 m) to UK oil and gas company Rockhopper Explorations, because in 2015 Italy banned new oil and gas projects within 12 nautical miles of its coastline.