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For over a decade a consensus has existed at Westminster on overseas aid, with the mainstream political parties all backing the 0.7% spending target. Achieving this consensus was a considerable achievement. But the focus on how big the aid budget is has prevented a robust debate over how this money should be spent, what it should be spent on, and why.

Here's the latest news and campaign actions on trade, for activists in Scotland
 

How Brexit will make UK trade deals less democratic and what to do about it.

What a democratic UK trade policy after Brexit would look like

Much more wealth is leaving the world’s most impoverished continent than is entering it, according to new research into total financial flows into and out of Africa.  The study finds that African countries receive $161.6 billion in resources such as loans, remittances and aid each year, but lose $203 billion through factors including tax avoidance, debt payments and resource extraction, creating an annual net financial deficit of over $40 billion.

No US president has aroused the same level of global public outrage before even occupying the White House as Donald Trump.

A free trade deal between the US and the UK is likely to include all the elements that made the earlier trade negotiations between the EU and the US on TTIP so controversial, but in a more extreme form – TTIP on steroids.

Could there be trade deals any worse than the toxic ones like TTIP and CETA, recently negotiated between the EU and other countries? Unfortunately, we think there could be, and what’s more, it is likely to be the UK government, post-Brexit who will be negotiating them. Already, there is talk of a US-UK trade deal. And this month, trade secretary Liam Fox has been meeting Commonwealth nations to talk about other trade deals – a meeting dubbed ‘Empire 2.0’ by Whitehall officials.

Small farmers feed the majority of the world’s population, yet they are experiencing escalating levels of violence and oppression. Their existence, livelihoods, and communities are threatened by the expansion of global agribusiness, which is grabbing their lands and destroying the environment they rely on for food production.