There's a background story for this: developing countries are very wary of international trade agreements. Here's why.<p>In the last decades the WTO created a new open and global economy. But an often untold story is that the European Union, U.S. and Japan deliberately left agriculture out of it, purely for internal political reasons (farmers=votes). Agriculture markets in rich countries are still very fiercely fenced by protectionism (hight taxes, fat subsidies, restrictive legislation, etc). For us (I live in Brazil) this is really a big deal because agriculture is precisely where our main competitive advantages are. We end up being only customers, not sellers.<p>The prevailing thinking here is that most trade agreements are a set-up by rich countries. Until agriculture is fixed in the WTO, our best strategy is to bomb any trade agreement.
The situation described at the end of the article actually happened last year. A shipment of generic drugs going from India to Brazil got confiscated in Amsterdam although they are perfectly legal in both countries.<p>The point of the matter is that legislation is tied to jurisdiction and some multinationals would like to be free from this restriction. We seem to have reached the point in which people believe IP to be a natural and universal right.<p>If rich countries push this hard enough, we might see less commerce going through their ports.
I think more of such stuff is going to come in coming years. It is just a manifestation of changing economic profile of the world. I believe something similar might have happened at climate talks - <a href="http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/05/05/Leaked-tapes-reveal-leaders-climate-fight/UPI-40441273090453/" rel="nofollow">http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/05/05/Lea...</a><p>How it plays out in the long term is anybody's guess. But right now the EU and US have run very high debts which are only increasing with the deficits. With not very good immediate economic prospects, the developed world is beginning to learn to have new folks at the table. When you are neck deep in debt and those new folks are your creditors, there really is no choice.
<i>But trying to derail the trade agreement, which is nearing completion, could be difficult for countries not involved in the process.</i><p>Nuclear weapons?