"On February 8 Crawford Falconer, Chairman of the Agriculture Committee negotiations of the WTO Doha Round, released a comprehensive draft of the agricultural text. It is his assessment of what may be agreeable to member governments based on recent negotiations. The Chairman said there are no great surprises in the draft and noted that governments must make political choices to move the negotiations forward. Market forces are beginning to overtake the negotiations and may make them easier to conclude.
"With the full implementation of NAFTA between the U.S. and Mexico on January 1, 2008 it took only a couple weeks for an issue to challenge the new free trade environment. U.S. and Mexican sugar industries have proposed a bilateral commission to manage sugar trade between the two countries. This could cause other groups in Mexico to propose managed trade for commodities opened to free trade in January such as dry beans, corn and nonfat dried milk, or those freed earlier such as pork and poultry. Working through this issue correctly will help avoid more problems in coming months.
News 
This year’s trade deficit is forecast to top $700 billion.
On February 8 Crawford Falconer, Chairman of the Agriculture Committee negotiations of the WTO Doha Round, released a comprehensive draft of the agricultural text. It is his assessment of what may be agreeable to member governments based on recent negotiations. The Chairman said there are no great surprises in the draft and noted that governments must make political choices to move the negotiations forward. Market forces are beginning to overtake the negotiations and may make them easier to conclude.
Does working the land wreck the land? 
Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as Òsomeone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory.Ó
