Corporate Power/accountability Publications and Resources

The Other Oil War: Halliburton's Agenda at the WTO
June 1, 2025 - Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization
A Policy Brief on the Energy Services negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO)

Rich nations are trying to use the WTO to create a new global policy framework for "energy security" that would fundamentally redefine, under the logic of "free trade in services," who will access energy resources, which ones are used and how, and who will benefit most from their exploitation.  Read publication...

The Hijacking of the Development Debate - How Friedman and Sachs Got It Wrong
August 1, 2025 - Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, World Policy Journal
Just a half decade after protests by citizen groups in Latin America and elsewhere discredited two decades of market-oriented neoliberal dogma, Friedman and Sachs have narrowed the debate with simplistic slogans of “more aid” and “more trade.” They have done so by putting forward myths about the poor, economic development, and the global economy.  Read publication...

The Economics of Outsourcing: How Should Policy Respond?
March 2, 2025 - Thomas Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
Outsourcing is a central element of economic globalization, representing a new form of competition. Responding to outsourcing calls for policies that enhance national competitiveness and establish rules ensuring acceptable forms of competition. Viewing outsourcing through the lens of competition connects with early 20th century American institutional economics. The policy challenge is to construct institutions that ensure stable, robust flows of demand and income, thereby addressing the Keynesian problem while preserving incentives for economic action. This was the approach embedded in the New Deal, which successfully addressed the problems of the Depression era. Global outsourcing poses the challenge anew and calls for creative institutional arrangements to shape the nature of competition.  Read publication...

Brazil and the Difficult Path to Multilateralism
March 8, 2025 - Raul Zibechi, International Relations Center - America's Program
Brazil's rise as a regional and world power that champions multilateralism is being met with domestic and international obstacles. In addition to the resistance of the United States, Brazil has left a bitter taste in the mouth of its own neighbors who feel its steamroller-like advances are creating a new disequilibrium on the subcontinent. The domestic problems of Brazil - a country that has won "the world championship of inequality" - are spilling over as the country aspires to become a major player on the international scene. Raúl Zibechi, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, is a professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina and adviser to several grassroots organizations. He is a monthly contributor to the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org).  Read publication...

WTO Ruling on Genetically Engineered Crops Would Override International, National and Local Protections
February 7, 2025 - Institute for Ag and Trade Policy
Ruling Favors U.S. Biotech Companies Over Precautionary Regulation  Read publication...

Sorting Out the DDA End Process
June 20, 2025 - Trade Reports International Group, Washington Trade Daily
Volume 14, Number 121 Friday, June 20, 2025 Geneva – A dozen capital-based senior trade officials today will be asked by the European Union to provide some indication as to how far they can go in advancing all the pillars of the Doha Development Agenda work program  Read publication...

World Social Forum Funder Delegation Report
March 1, 2025 - Mark Randazzo, Funders Network on Trade and Globalization
Excerpts from a report of FNTG's funder delegation to the WSF 2005.  Read publication...

Proxy Season Preview Spring 2005
April 20, 2025 - As You Sow Foundation
Helping Foundations Align Mission And Investment - This booklet is intended to make foundations more aware of important upcoming proxy votes and highlights social and environmental issues that are directly relevant to the missions of foundations.  Read publication...

Choike at the World Social Forum
February 8, 2025 - Choike: A Portal on Southern Civil Societies, a project of the Third World Institute
In this report Choike offers articles, discussions from previous regional forums, news, debates and background information on the World Social Forum 2005. Coverage was also provided during the development of this event.  Read publication...

From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics
May 6, 2025 - Thomas I. Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
Thomas I. Palley is the chief economist at the U.S.-China Security Review Commission. This essay will appear as a chapter in a book by Deborah Johnston and Alfredo Saad-Filho, eds., Neoliberalism--A Critical Reader ).  Read publication...

FTAA: Health Hazard for the Americas?
November 16, 2024 - Ellen R. Shaffer, CPATH (Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health)
The Americas face critical threats to health, including crises in access to health care, water and other vital human services; re-emerging but preventable fatal diseases; the advance of AIDS; and biohazards. Imbalances in wealth and power undermine equity between and within nations. Addressing these crises is a high priority, and requires effective, cooperative international efforts. The draft Free Trade Area of the Americas is likely to worsen these problems, and to challnge countries’ domestic regulations, including those proven effective in advancing and protecting public health. This report presents issues and concerns related to the impact of the FTAA on democracy, public health and health care in the Americas. It reviews the arguments for and against liberalizing trade in health services, inequalities in health and wealth in the Americas, with a case study of Peru, and presents recommendations.  Read publication...

Call for Public Health Accountability in International Trade Agreements
November 16, 2024 - Joe Brenner, CPATH (Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health)
The Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) threatens measures that protect health, provide access to medications, and assure the safety and affordability of vital human services, including health care, water, education and energy. Under the FTAA, vital human services are tradable commodities. The statement, signed by public health and health advocates, establishes the priority of health over commercial concerns, and calls for transparent and accountable fair trade negotiations that exclude vital human services.  Read publication...

The Right to Water
March 1, 2025 - Jim Shultz, The Democracy Center
Water is a limited natural resource and a public good fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. Water, and water facilities and services, must be affordable for all.

--UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, November 2002

What does it take to translate these noble words into reality for the poor of Latin America and the world? This is the question addressed in this article and in a forthcoming book 'Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Latin America: From Theory to Practice.'  Read publication...

A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All
February 24, 2025 - World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, International Labour Organization (ILO)
Globalization can and must change, says a new, groundbreaking report presented today to the International Labour Organization (ILO) urging that building a fair and inclusive globalization become a worldwide priority. This report, issued by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, calls for an "urgent rethink" of current policies and institutions of global governance.  Read publication...

Investing in Destruction: The Impacts of a WTO Investment Agreement on Extractive Industries in Developing Countries
June 1, 2025
This report shows how a WTO investment treaty would exacerbate the social and environmental problems associated with extractive industries in developing countries. The report above all makes a strong case for keeping investment rules off of the WTO's agenda.  Read publication...

NAFTA's Untold Stories: Mexico's Response to North American Integration
June 10, 2025 - Timothy A. Wise, Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center
Although some policymakers still point to Mexico as a success story, there is a growing consensus that its free trade experiment has not lived up to expectations. Results of nine case studies published in the book Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico illustrate implications for a host of new trade agreements now under consideration.  Read publication...

Economic Globalization vs. Human Rights: Lessons From The Bolivian Water Revolt
April 30, 2025
The Bechtel Corporation’s 2000 takeover of the public water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia and the civic revolt that ended it, in addition to being an inspiring story of local people taking courageous action, is also a cautionary tale of how global economic rules have the power to reduce international human rights law into nothing but pretty words on paper.  Read publication...

Water Justice for All
March 31, 2025 - Friends of the Earth International
Major new publication from Friends of the Earth International, in pdf format.  Read publication...

WATER IS LIFE: A CIVIL SOCIETY WORLD WATER VISION FOR ACTION
March 31, 2025
This civil society statement was prepared in the run up to the World Water Forum in Kyoto.  Read publication...

Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War
March 20, 2025 - Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, CorpWatch has learned that thousands of employees of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, are working alongside United States troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars.  Read publication...

Porto Alegre & Beyond: Following up on the World Social Forum
November 22, 2024 - Interhemispheric Resource Center
The growing profile of citizen-based agendas in global affairs represents one of the most promising developments in the international arena. This "Citizen Action in the Americas Discussion Paper" reports on an annual gathering that has become a prominent space for citizens' movements to meet and develop strategies for a more hopeful future: the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.  Read publication...

A New Development Paradigm-Domestic Demand-Led Growth
October 30, 2024 - Thomas I. Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
WHY IT IS NEEDED & HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN Critics of the neoliberal model of economic development—one driven by the demands of transnational corporations— have long been saying that this dominant paradigm isn’t working. It’s not producing broad-based economic development at home or abroad. But what’s the alternative?  Read publication...

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
September 1, 2024 - U.S. Government
The National Security Strategy was issued by the White House in September.  Read publication...

Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy
October 10, 2024 - Edited by Robin Broad, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Global Backlash is the first book to move beyond the monolithic portrayal of the globalization protests that have escalated since Seattle and are not likely to abate soon.  Read publication...

Giving Away the Farm: The 2002 Farm Bill
September 25, 2024 - Anuradha Mittal, Institute for Food and Development Policy
The bill's potential for good pales in comparison to the damage it will do. Overall, the new bill fails the nation's family farmers, consumers, taxpayers, and environment. It further destabilizes family farmers and rural communities around the world.  Read publication...

Living Economies
August 29, 2024 - YES! magazine
The fall issue of YES! magazine brings alive alternatives to what lead author David Korten calls the global suicide economy. This issue of YES! features stories on how communities from Brazil to Appalachia, from Argentina to Vermont are building living economies that value life and community.  Read publication...

From Rio to Johannesburg: The Globalization Decade
July 24, 2025 - Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, CorpWatch and Food First Books
An overview of the political, environmental and economic context in the 10 years between the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and the upcoming Summit in Johannesburg.  Read publication...

African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD
July 8, 2025
African civil society organizations declare their resistance to the "New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development" (Nepad), and push for demands that they think better address development, democracy, human rights and peace in Africa.  Read publication...

A Guide to the Enron Collapse
July 8, 2025 - Polaris Institute, Darren Puscas
This article provides an overall guide to understanding the Enron debacle, in a manner that broadens it from the standard, narrow financial or scandal-based story you can read in newspapers.  Read publication...

Greenwash + 10
January 24, 2025 - Kenny Bruno, CorpWatch
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro represented a high point of hope for the international community in general and the United Nations in particular. The Rio Summit led to a series of challenging negotiations whose purpose was to protect the earth and improve life for its most impoverished inhabitants. Unfortunately, that purpose was undermined by the Summit's failure to confront corporate power in any meaningful way.  Read publication...

Enron's Pawns: How Public Institutions Bankrolled Enron's Globalization Game
June 18, 2025 - Jim Vallette and Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies
Report by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network explores how the now-fallen giant's rise to global prominence depended upon close financial relationships with U.S. agencies, the World Bank, and other government institutions.  Read publication...

Managing the Invisible Hand - Markets, Farmers and International Trade
April 1, 2025 - Sophia Murphy, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The current global agriculture trade agreement will not succeed in helping farmers and broad-based economic development until it addresses market power by transnational corporations, finds a new report released today by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.  Read publication...