From an article in "The Economist" about the failure of the Doha Trade Round...
"WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION
Jul 27th 2006
The global trade talks have collapsed because the world's biggest
economies prefer failure to compromise. What comes next?
" In principle, a compromise was there for the taking. Indeed, Mr Lamy has informally laid out its contours: more subsidy cuts than America has offered and more ambitious tariff cuts by the EU and big emerging economies. So why has nothing happened? One reason is genuine differences over whether the interests of poor people are best served by lower tariffs or more special protection. But the explanation lies chiefly in the failure of countries to face down their own powerful protectionist lobbies, particularly farmers." "
Failure? Or is it unwillingness? I often wonder if they even try, or if they feel that farmers should not be bothered at all, and that developed countries are afraid to death from some angry farmers threatening to block a highway with their tractors.
We are in a sad but obvious mercantilist era. Bye bye, unilateral liberalisation! Chile was a unique case where they removed all their tariff barriers and it worked really well - it will only be a case in history, I guess.
Finito la Doha Development Round! When the world pretended, after September 11th 2001 that this round would be dedicated to the 'poor', and that it understood that poverty fosters violence, well, guess again! The world failed its poor.
Expect more bread riots to come. And let the farmers enjoy their subsidies. I hope their choke on them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Poverty fosters violence but who said this bothered the US in any way?
"Violent" poors are quite helpful since you can always use them to rationalize decisions that otherwise would seem to be taken from the "ABC of how to profane every humane principle the world ever agreed to follow". So you can bomb Iraq or any "potentially" dangerous and "potentially" violent country but you don't have to intervene in order to solve the "genuine" and "existing" economical crisis that exist in most of the world not-doing-so-well countries.
I guess historians should have waited before naming Middle Aged Europe the "Dark Ages" because now would have been a perfect time for that naming... guess we could always call it Darker Ages or Unenlightenment Ages ... Well good luck humanity (u r really going to need it) !
On dit souvent que les pays riches protègent leurs agriculteurs au détriment des pays pauvres, mais il ne faut pas oublier que la majeure partie des agriculteurs des pays riches se retrouvent parmi la population pauvre de leur pays... Bref, que l'on soit dans un pays riche ou pauvre, l'agriculture n'est pas un bon choix de carrière... C'est quand même étonnant que l'on maintienne dans une situation précaire ceux qui nous permettent de manger, donc de vivre et fonctionner...
Post a Comment