Deborah is the director of international programs at CEPR. She has over 25 years of expertise working on issues of trade and democratic global governance. At CEPR, her work focuses on the International Monetary Fund and US policy toward Latin America.
For the last 18 years, Deborah facilitated the global Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) network that successfully stopped the expansion of the World Trade Organization (WTO). She is a world-renowned expert on the potential impacts of the WTO’s proposed Doha Round on workers, farmers, and communities and digital trade and regularly briefs governments and civil society around the world. She co-led the global campaign to defeat the proposed Trade in Services Agreement.
Previous to CEPR, she was the director of the WTO Program of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. She was also the global economy director of Global Exchange where she did similar work around the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas and started the first Fair Trade coffee campaigns.
Deborah has written numerous articles and makes regular media appearances in English and Spanish and has appeared on CNN en Español, Voice of America, CNN International, and the O’Reilly Factor, among other news outlets. She graduated cum laude in psychology and women’s studies from the University of California at San Diego and holds a Masters in International Policy and Planning from the George Washington University.
All from Deborah James
What’s at Stake at the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi?
At stake is a fight between two visions of what role the WTO, as the world’s most powerful rule-making body in the global economy, should play.
The European Union’s Digital Trade Rules: Undermining European Policy to Rein in Big Tech
This report shows how Big Tech companies are working to constrain the ability of EU democratic bodies to regulate their activities in the public interest through “trade” agreements, which are binding and permanent.
The World Trade Organization After the 12th Ministerial Conference
New mandates must beget new organizing.
Why It Matters What’s Going on Right Now at the WTO
After many postponements, the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will take place June 12–15, 2022, in Geneva.
What’s at Stake at the WTO?
Too much is at stake at the upcoming 12th ministerial conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), set to take place from November 30 to December 3, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Trade and Development Backstory: The Struggle Over the UNCTAD 15 Mandate
Governments and civil society organizations must work together with UNCTAD to provide developing countries the tools — and the transformed governance regimes — they need to “build back better” through these challenging and difficult times.
Digital Trade Rules: A Disastrous New Constitution for the Global Economy Written By and for Big Tech
The largest corporations in the history of the world ― Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft ― are seeking to use “trade” rules to rig the rules of the global (digital) economy to enable them to collect more data, exercise more control over our l
What Not to Do During a Pandemic: Business-As-Usual on Trade Negotiations
some rich countries, including Australia, Canada, and Switzerland, as well as the European Union, are busy at the World Trade Organization (WTO) trying to pressure others into “virtual negotiations” on investment facilitation, regulation of domestic servi
The WTO 20 Years After the ‘Battle of Seattle’
The solution to the current conflicts on trade policy is not a false nationalism that nonetheless expands corporate control, nor a defense of the current failed corporate system. We need a wholly different system than that embodied in the WTO.
Giant Tech Corporations Join Forces with the WTO to Try to Launch a WTO 2.0 to Cement Digital Colonialism through International Treaties
Deborah JamesAmérica Latina en movimiento, no 542, June 2019