I don't want to get political on anyone, but this is Trade Agreements and part of international trade involves politics.

Ever since seeing Food Inc this week, I've been on a big organic kick. Yesterday I went on a quest at the mall for organic cotton clothing. Today I bought some organic (and sustainably grown) Torrontes.

The European Union is negotiating a trade pact with two West African regional groups and is hoping to complete the process by October 2009.

It's been a busy month for South Korea's international trade representatives!

Via ThanhnienNews.com - Chile and Vietnam are hoping to sign a free trade agreement soon.

According to the Korea Times, South Korea and the EU are getting closer to finalizing a free trade agreement.

On June 2nd, the Journal of Commerce reported that the Mexican National Trucking Association is tired of waiting for the U.S. to reestablish its trucking program to enter in and out of the U.S.

Next in the series of prognostications for 2009: look for companies to expand the benefit of low-cost country sourcing by leveraging the duty savings from preferential trade agreements. NAFTA was signed into law in 1993, and in the past decade the number of trade agreements has multiplied many times over. The World Trade Organization tracks this trend and has this nifty chart on the the number of trade agreements in force and also tracks the degree of change (see the solid lines) associated with "notifications" related to regional trade agreements

Welcome to Trade Agreements Info – resources for trade agreement news, analysis, and other global trade management musings.

Back in the 1990s, the governors of the two largest border economies in Mexico and the United States were kicking around ideas to expand NAFTA to create a Super NAFTA. Then, in 2000 each was elected to president of their respective nations and the timing looked great for Vicente Fox and the people of Mexico to expand trade and achieve the next level of economic growth.

I had the opportunity to hear Former President Vicente Fox recount his perspectives on globalization at the recent AMR Executive Supply Chain Conference. A renaissance man, he got his start selling soda pop for the world’s largest BevCo, rising to the top spot in Latin America in the Sixties. This success propelled him to tHe Business School in Boston. Post-graduation, he decided to apply his trade at the family cowboy boot business.

Lucky for Vicente, John Travolta, teen heartthrob of Welcome Back Kotter and Saturday Night Live, applied his coolness to boots in the film Urban Cowboy. The Fox family business exploded and Vicente expanded distribution world-wide, learning from the sole up how to build a global business.