He talks the talk, I’ll say that for him. But he still seems to think that it all needs to be managed. The very essence of his approach to politics and life, of course, this idea that people just getting on with it without his aid, wthout guidance from the great and the good, being impossible.
I want trade to be put
at the service of development. But turning aspiration into reality is
complicated. Last week, I visited the Caribbean. Their trade ministers
share my passion for trade justice. But for them justice is about the
EU not reducing its tariffs so that they continue to benefit from the
preferential access and quota arrangements denied to other countries.
In sugar and bananas, for example, this accounts for a large portion of
their competitive advantage. Calls for sweeping reform of the common
agricultural policy (CAP) strike apprehension rather than joy into
their hearts.
Perfectly true.
The old-style preference
regimes between Europe and developing countries have not provided a
pathway out of poverty. If anything they have reinforced a damaging
dependence on limited tropical commodities that often suited their
one-time colonial masters.
Also perfectly true and it would have benefitted from being in the same paragraph as the first statement. For how people view a subsidy and the actual effects of it can be, as they are in this case, different.
Under the EU’s Everything
But Arms policy, all least developed countries (including
three-quarters of African countries) are being offered tariff and
quota-free access to EU markets for everything, including agricultural
products.
No, I didn’t know that but why is it limited? Why isn’t it simply the general default condition for everyone?
The same double-edged
consequences apply to the British government’s demand for an early
end-date for agricultural export subsidies. Yes, I want to negotiate
this. Yes, reducing trade distorting agricultural subsidies is vital.
This is a classic case where multilateral negotiation in the Doha round
provides vastly more development benefit than unilateral action. But we
should be clear that, in the short term, ending export subsidies may
mean more expensive food imports for the struggling poor in the rapidly
growing cities of many developing countries.
That is outrageous although true. Our dumping of subsidized food is one of the things that kills local agriculture. To use the transient benefit to the urban (a small portion of the total) populations without mentioning the harm to the rural one as a justufucation is breathtaking. We don’t do it for those reasons, we do it to try and stop Jose Bove burning down another McDonalds.
What really annoys me is that nowhere does he actually mention the truth about the EU’s tariff and quota barriers. They make Europeans poorer. This is why they have to go, not out of some goodie two shoes concern for the rest of the world but because they are a rampant and disgusting power grab, moving wealth from the general populace to those producers who have the political power to get the protections.
And by ignoring that argument, by stating that the reforms are to help the poor nations, we ensure that the reforms will only be about imports from the poor nations. When in fact, they should be about imports from all and any nations. Like the one no one wants to mention,. the USA.
No, not fair trade, trade justice, managed over a decade or more. Free trade and free trade now.
It’s odd really, Mandelson has more power over this matter than anyone else on the planet. Trade is an exclusive EU competence, he’s the Trade Commissioner and the absence of democracy in the EU method of doing things means that he has more power and leeway than anyone else (note the difficulties Bush had about CAFTA?). While there are indeed limits on what he can do there are less than those on any of the other players. If he were arguing for real free trade globally then he might actually do some good.
Pity he’s a managerialist tit then isn’t it?
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