Re: Moore’s Sicko Analysis
On Jul 22, 2007, at 1:40 PM, Chuck wrote:
Quite a few analysts give credit to the movement for torpedoing the
WTO.
It may have emboldened a couple of delegations at the Seattle talks,
leading to their breakdown. But that was almost 8 years ago. They
began another round of trade talks in Doha in late 2001, and those
have stalled because of a complex set of disagreements among the
members. See the NYT piece below. Unless this is a conspiracy of the
pig media to deny the power of puppets, Seattle doesn’t figure in
this at all.
You don’t hear much about the WTO these days, do you?
It was on the front of the NYT biz section just yesterday.
Doug
New York Times - July 21, 2007
After Six Years, the Global Trade Talks Are Just That: Talk By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, July 20 — Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States
helped start a round of global trade talks aimed at getting rich
countries to lower trade barriers so that poor countries could
prosper by exporting goods, not terrorism. But it was never that simple.
Six years later, the trade talks are on life support, suffering from
so many disputes that like the victim in Agatha Christie’s “Murder on
the Orient Express,” almost everyone could be guilty of killing them
off.
There are disputes pitting Europe against the United States, rich
countries against poor countries, and farming countries against
industrial countries.
But a major new factor in the deadlock is a global economic
realignment that has vaulted China, India and Brazil into the top
tier of the world’s emerging markets, much to the concern of other
developing countries like Mexico, Chile and Thailand.
India and Brazil are refusing to lower their tariffs out of fear of
export-driven economies like China’s. A second tier of developing
countries that are trying to compete with India and Brazil are
complaining that they are being shut out by India, Brazil and other
rapidly developing countries. Meanwhile, the poorest of the poor
countries in Africa and elsewhere charge that the richer emerging
market economies, which portray themselves as champions of the poor,
are actually ignoring their needs.
“There is no value in blaming any single country over the state of
our negotiations,” Peter Mandelson, the top European trade
negotiator, said in an interview. “But this is not a classic North-
South conflict. It is also South-South. The developed countries and
the emerging economies have a responsibility to help the poorer
countries.”
Failure of the global trade talks is widely seen as potentially
damaging to the world economy, which is powered by more than $10
trillion in trade of goods and services annually. The World Bank
calculates that a new trade deal could add hundreds of billions of
dollars to the world’s income.
This week, the World Trade Organization in Geneva tried to resolve
the trade impasse by proposing compromises by all sides. On Friday,
Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, urged the parties to
heed the call for a middle ground. “The global community should stay
focused on the prize,” he said, adding that “all economies should be
able to benefit” from a deal.
It was a pointed appeal, because Mr. Zoellick served as the United
States trade envoy when the current talks were started in Doha, Qatar
in 2001, as a “development round” to aid the poor.
The impasse has grown bitter, however.
Last month, Susan C. Schwab, the United States trade representative,
charged that India and Brazil displayed “a lack of flexibility,
indeed a rigidity” in refusing to lower farm and industrial tariffs
in a way that could benefit not just the West but other poor countries.
“There are some folks who may want to portray this as a north-south
breakdown,” Ms. Schwab said. “I think nothing could be further from
the truth.”
In an interview Friday, after returning from meetings with nearly 40
envoys of African countries in Ghana, Ms. Schwab said that while
South Africa was backing the position of India and Brazil, the other
African countries were in desperate need of a trade deal. The onus,
she said, was on the richer developing countries to make it happen.
“The Doha round is a development round, but that means something
different than it would have meant 15 years ago,” she said. “It means
that obviously the developed countries need to do the most. But the
most rapidly growing developing countries need to do the next most
because of the benefits they derived from an open trading system.”
But the Indian trade minister, Kamal Nath, has stood firm, suggesting
that the United States and Europe were intransigent in keeping farm
subsidies and other trade barriers high, hurting the world’s poor.
India charges that American farm subsidies especially keep American
farm products artificially competitive against imports.
Though Mr. Nath maintained that trade talks were still mired in a
conflict between rich and poor countries, recent developments suggest
that a cleavage has indeed opened up among developing countries, with
some emerging economies not wanting China, India and Brazil to speak
for them.
India and Brazil, for instance, call for phased-in reductions of
tariffs on manufactured goods that would leave the highest tariffs at
roughly 30 percent, though there were hints they could live with a
level of 25 percent.
The United States and Europe, which would reduce their own industrial
tariffs to a few percentage points, say that India and Brazil have
taken a hard line because of a fear of imports from China and other
export-driven economies. India fears more specifically that its auto
industry could be nearly wiped out by Chinese imports.
A new bloc of exporting countries are proposing a more conciliatory
approach by suggesting a range for tariffs of the upper teens to the
low twenties for the most protected products. This new “middle
ground” bloc is led by Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, China,
Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Thailand.
Brazil is considered pivotal in future negotiations because many
analysts say it stands to gain the most from a trade deal as a
superpower exporter of industrial goods and also a wide range of food
products, from sugar to fruits and vegetables. Its position is
considered likely to be more flexible than India’s.
Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister and trade envoy, has
been less willing to attack the West than Mr. Nath, but he denies
that there is a rift between Brazil and India and other poor
countries. “We are on the same wave length in terms of unity and
mobilization,” he said in Geneva this month.
The United States, meanwhile, is still under pressure to do more on
its own to reduce its farm subsidies. Current law allows the United
States to subsidize farm products, if it so chooses, to nearly $50
billion a year. But in the last three years, world food prices have
been so high that American subsidies have not come close to that level.
Last year, for example, the United States paid $12 billion to
subsidize farm products that compete with imports from other
countries. That is the level at which India and Brazil want the
United States to keep its so-called trade-distorting subsidies in the
future.
The Bush administration argues that $12 billion was unusually low,
and that its offer of a ceiling of $17 billion is below the levels of
most of the last 10 years. Ms. Schwab has also hinted that the United
States might reduce the level further if it sees flexibility from
India and Brazil.
Outside the picture are the 60 or 70 poorest countries that stand to
benefit the most from a trade deal, including countries in Africa and
the poorest parts of Latin America and Asia. In a speech in Africa
last week, Ms. Schwab said that 70 percent of the tariffs paid by
poor countries goes to other poor countries.
Ms. Schwab has also repeatedly called on China to show more
leadership in promoting an international trade deal. But many trade
experts say that China is deliberately laying low to avoid stoking
fears of its products in the developing world.
“A lot of developing countries are seized with the idea that if they
undertake tariff reductions, they’re going to be overrun by Chinese
goods,” said William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign
Trade Council in Washington, a protrade lobbying group. “It’s going
to be hard to disabuse them of that fear.”