Selected news and sites from today’s research:

The International Economic Law and Policy Blog notes that more than just the threat of a WTO dispute can affect domestic farm subsidies — the cost of the Iraq war will hurt the budget for US agriculture spending.

Speaking of domestic farm subsidies, Ben Muse has a post on the EU / US trade deal involving capping these subsidies. It looks like this deal could revive the Doha Round.

Both of these posts, for me, reinforce the need to look at the circumstances of these agreements holistically, as many forces come into play when negotiating these agreements.

And in regional political news, bilaterals.org has a copy of an AP story ‘Unification remains elusive at Mercosur‘ discussing last week’s two-day Mercosur summit. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales were both there advocating a reformation of Mercosur to focus in on areas other than free trade.

The Chavez / Morales agenda is the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA in Spanish). This is an agreement put forth as an alternative to FTAs, and emphasizes social policy rather than ‘free trade’.

For more links, you might want to see this ZNet story, the ALBA wikipedia entry, and this piece from venezuelanalysis.com.

Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace laureate Oscar Arias Sánchez met in the White House with George W. Bush to talk about debt, democracy in Latin America, and of course CAFTA. As mentioned in earlier posts, Costa Rica has yet to ratify and implement the agreement.

Bush was briefed about the legislative process to approve CAFTA, and while he did not put any public pressure for the approval, he did mention that trade is one of the most important elements for development. Costa Rica is the largest economy in the CAFTA treaty, and its absence in the agreement would a tremendous blow for the free trade zone.

Bush also mentioned that he may look into condoning $104 million USD in debt that Costa Rica has with the USA in exchange for investment in health and education. Bush stated that those countries which invested in education and not in weapons should be rewarded in some form.

I must admit that when I heard that my irony meter broke and I could not continue listening to the press conference, so I don’t know if something else of importance was mentioned.