15 November 2018: RCEP Ministers from 16 countries meeting in Singapore have confirmed in a statement that they will miss the deadline of finishing the agreement in 2018, and that talks will continue in 2019. The statement says that seven of twenty chapters of the agreement have been completed. 

The Regional comprehensive Economic Partnership talks between China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the 10 ASEAN countries, covering half the world’s population, began in 2012 and have missed many deadlines.

Media Release 8 November 2018: “AFTINET welcomes the Labor Opposition initiative to revisit the Peru-Australia Free Trade Agreement (PAFTA) because it includes foreign investor rights to sue governments (ISDS) which the Shadow Trade Minister has pledged to oppose in all trade agreements,” AFTINET Convener Dr Patricia Ranald said today.

7 November 2018: George Kahale III, an internationally recognised expert on ISDS, in the keynote speech to an investment arbitration conference in Prague, has described the system as a ‘weapon of legal destruction’.

5 November 2018: Chatham House has published an article by research fellow Cleo Paskal which argues that PACER Plus mainly benefits Australia and New Zealand, and could damage their relationships in the region. She says that Fiji and PNG, representing 80% of Pacific Island Countries’ combined GDP, have not joined PACER Plus because the increased imports from Australia and New Zealand may threaten their developing industries.  Nine smaller Pacific Islands have been pressured to sign a deal they are reluctant to implement.

1 November 2018: Jim Stanford, a leading progressive economist speaking at New Zealand’s alternative trade conference last week, argues in this video that “free trade” is not actually about a market free of rules, but about rules that favour corporations and prevent governments from regulating in the public interest.

Media release 31 October 2018: “The Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) has joined more than 300 civil society groups to urge governments at United Nations meetings in Vienna this week to completely overhaul the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system contained in trade agreements like the TPP-11, which the Australian government has just ratified. 

October 29, 2018: Sign the ActionAid Australia open letter to politicians calling for gender-just trade, in light of the specific impacts on women of the #TPP and other free trade agreements.

29 October 2018: AFTINET welcomes the announced review of the Peru-Australia trade agreement (PAFTA), which shares with the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP-11) many harmful provisions. 

22 October 2018: A livestream of the conference “What an Alternative and Progressive Trade Strategy Should Look Like” at Auckland University got around 17,000 online viewers this week, as the push against agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (“TPP-11”) continues.

Media Release 17 October 2018: “AFTINET is deeply disappointed that the Senate looks set to pass the TPP-11 implementing legislation,” AFTINET Convener Dr Patricia Ranald said today.

“Progressive civil society groups, including public health, environment, aid and development groups, churches and unions have played a leading role in exposing the dangers of the TPP-11 in what has been an eight-year public debate.”