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Posts are by members of the Peoples Health Movement PEH Network. Anyone may comment but you will need to register before your first comment will be published.

This blogsite is a resource of the People’s Health Movement. Its purpose is to provide a platform for discussion of the applications of political economy to the struggle for health. (The People’s Charter for Health provides an overview of PHM’s analyses and objectives: the ‘struggle for health’).

  • A less noticed implication of Trump tariffs

    “A less noticed implication of Trump tariffs” posted by Prabhat Patnaik on Peoples Democracy  on August 17, 2025.  DONALD Trump’s tariffs are being discussed in the media in a routine manner without considering their specific context. This context is one where the US government is unwilling to spend the revenues accruing from higher tariffs on buying goods…

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  • WTO Reform: Rewriting Trade History – The United States as Architect and Beneficiary of the Multilateral Trading System

    By Vahini Naidu, South Centre, 1 September 2025 This paper examines the revisionist trade narrative advanced by the United States, whichportrays multilateral rules as disadvantageous and seeks to justify unilateral tariffs andcoercive bilateral arrangements. It demonstrates that the principles of non-discriminationand reciprocity pre-date Bretton Woods and were embedded in the multilateral systemthrough U.S. initiatives from…

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  • Washington takes on the BRICS

    By Patrick Lawrence of  Consortium News republished in Other News 24 July 2025: Trump’s lashing out at the group of non-Western nations is so clumsy, so off the mark, so utterly unaware of where the hands are on history’s clock. Well, it took long enough for the White House and the policy cliques to notice…

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  • The trade-off of a shrinking cattle herd: higher prices, lower emissions

    By Ben Lilliston of IATP on 23 July 2025. The U.S. cattle herd is the smallest it’s been in 70 years. In June, the price of ground beef rose over $6, the highest since the government started tracking in 1980. A smaller cattle herd has led to higher prices paid to ranchers, higher beef prices for…

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  • Progress on the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation

    In preparation for the August 2025 sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) to be held in August 2025, the Co-Leads of each of the three Workstreams have released Draft Issues Notes for public comments. The Issues Notes are meant to provide direction on…

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  • The dismantling of American health care

    Important analysis of the impacts of Trump on healthcare in the USA by leading analysts: Adam Gaffney, David U. Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler published in the New York Review July 8 2025 (here). Their detailed review of the Trump devastation ends with the following: “We find ourselves living under a federal government unconcerned with the…

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  • No drug price pledges by Pfizer, others in talks with US government, Pfizer CEO says

    By Michael Erman (Reuters) on 10 June 2025.  Pfizer and other drug companies have met with the Trump administration to discuss lowering U.S. drug prices but no commitments have been made, Chief Executive Albert Bourla said on Monday. President Donald Trump issued an executive order last month directing drugmakers to lower the prices of their medicines to align…

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  • China, unequal exchange, and the present world-historic juncture

    Professor Jason Hickel’s speech to the Fudan University forum (18 April 2025) on “Socialist Perspectives on Global Governance in a Multipolar World.” Published by Progressive International. “My objective this morning is to analyse the world economy from the perspective of unequal exchange. I will describe how this works, how it poses an obstacle to development,…

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  • Pharmaceutical patents and data exclusivity in an age of AI-driven drug discovery and development

    Artificial intelligence (AI) stands to drastically reduce both the risks and costs normally associated with the development of new medical products. This could fundamentally reshape pharmaceutical innovation, challenging both the justification for high medicines prices to recoup investment in research and development (R&D) and the market exclusivity systems – including patents and data exclusivity –…

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  • Who’s Afraid of Trump’s Tariffs?

    C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh (posted on IDEAS blog, 1 April 2025) observe that the weaponization of tariffs by US President Donald Trump has generated fear and loathing across the world. These threats are not only purely performative; nor are they just transactional in nature. The logic of these tariff threats in most cases…

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