Korea-U.S. FTA

Christine Ahn's Five Myths

Christine Ahn prepared the leaflet Debunking Five Myths aboutthe Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (Korus FTA) for the progressive/left, Oakland Institute.

The five myths:

KORUS FTA and Drugs

Sungjoon Cho of the Chicago-Kent Law School has reservations about the pharmaceutical provisions of the Korea-U.S. FTA agreement: Is a Free Trade Agreement a Royal Road To Prosperity? Demystifying Trade Regional. This is one of the papers prepared for the Korea Economic Institute workshop on Static and Dynamic Consequences of a KORUS FTA last May.

Cho's larger theme is the shortcomings of a bilateral, as opposed to multilateral, approach to reducing trade barriers. 

Amongst other things, bilateral negotiations give lthe U.S. scope to push for things that would be more difficult to get in a mulitlateral forum.  One of these things is a watering down of its multilateral commitments on intellectual property:

KORUS and Korean health care - a critical view

Sean Flynn of the Washington School of Law at American University, and Mike Palmedo of CPTech, provided preliminary thoughts on the draft agreement on May 25, when the text was released: PIJIP Comments on the Korus FTA Pharmaceuticals and IP Chapters. (the PIJIP is the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the Washington School).

Four or five pages argue that: