Billy Joel ~ Easy Money
The Doha Round of the World Trade Organization talks have collapsed after seven years of work.
Global Trade Talks Collapse In Acrimony
"After seven years of effort, international negotiations aimed at liberalizing global trade have collapsed in Geneva, with industrialized nations and developing countries blaming each other for the failure.
"This meeting has collapsed," Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), said late on July 29. WTO "members have simply not been able to bridge their differences."
Since 2001, when the WTO launched its so-called Doha round of negotiations -- and until last night -- hope had prevailed that the organization's 153 members could strike a grand bargain on world trade."
The issue is that free trade is in the best interests of all parties. Given that, to have free trade you have to at some point be willing to drop protectionist polices that provide safe havens for some "sacred cow" local industries for political reasons. Inevitably, some people think they can have their cake and eat it to by keeping their own protectionist polices while also having unfettered access to other markets. Local politics takes over from macroeconomics and you end up with this.
"In broad terms, the generous subsidies that many developed countries now offer their farmers would have been slashed. That could have opened up European and U.S. markets to produce from the developing world, potentially lifting millions of Third World farmers out of poverty.
Tariffs on industrial goods and services would also have been lowered, allowing European, North American, and Japanese businesses to gain greater market share in the developing world.
But it was not to be. Everyone is now seeking to blame the other side."
It seems that everyone is pointing fingers at each other:
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement noting both countries' rising global influence. It admonished them that "with great power comes great responsibility."
Japan joined the assault on Beijing and New Delhi, with government spokesman Nobutaka Michimura saying both countries needed "to take more responsibility."
France's agriculture minister, Michel Barmier, concurred. The big emerging countries," he said, were to blame for the lack of a deal.
Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has called for the WTO to treat last night's lack of consensus as a "pause, not a breakdown."
So now that the talks have stopped, what now? My guess is that the countries willing to hammer out a deal will press forward among themselves and leave the uncooperative country's in the dust. That does not bode well for emerging nations would are really
struggling. So look for more acrimony toward the U.S. and U.K. from the have nots.
This is why I always say that economic policy needs to be decided without politicians being involved.
~ 3 WOOD
THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION On April 16, 1994, the New York Times carried a huge ad which read:
1944 Bretton Woods:
The IMF and the World Bank. 1945 San Francisco: The United Nations. 1994 Marrakech: The World Trade Organization. History knows where it's going. The Final Act of the Uruguay Round, marking the conclusion of the most ambitious trade negotiation of our century will give birth – in Morocco – to the World Trade Organization, the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.
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