As the world continues to deal with the global economic downturn, Pascal Lamy, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, publicly urged all nations to overcome protectionist instincts as they work to return growth to their national economies. Lamy made his remarks while speaking to the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Australian think tank. Director-General Pascal Lamy said protectionist instincts are completely understandable in the current economic climate but that such regulations would be equivalent to “shooting their own foot.” “People want to protect their jobs, they want to protect …
U.S. agriculture subsidies are again threatening American leadership on free trade. The Financial Times reports: Brazil is preparing to take action against the US over what it says are illegal subsidies and other trade barriers following the collapse of the Doha round of talks at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva last week. … In June the WTO upheld a complaint by Brazil that Washington had not done enough to remove illegal subsidies to its cotton farmers, opening the way for Brazil to request WTO authorization for more than $1 …
Writing on agriculture’s role in the collapse of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson summarizes the past 70 years of U.S. farm policy in the New York Times: Here at home Congress recently overrode President Bush’s veto to approve a $300 billion, multiyear farm bill awash in subsidy payments regardless of current commodity prices. Yet we all know the tired refrain each time these indefensible farm bills come up for enactment. First, they are transparent election-cycle harvests for farm-state politicians, who have …
This week’s collapse of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks was a historic defeat for free trade and will unfortunately probably have negative effects around the world for years to come. The Wall Street Journal reports today: The failure of the talks isn’t likely to have big effects immediately on the flow of world trade or on economic growth. Outside of agriculture and textiles, trade barriers generally are low globally because of decades of tariff cutting. But the consequences of the failure were still significant because of the …
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who once threatened to resign if Congress stripped funding for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, was indicted yesterday on seven felony counts for failing to disclose gifts from an Alaskan firm. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Geneva, international talks aimed at ushering in a new era of free trade collapsed over World Trade Organization member nations’ unwillingness to end farm subsidies. These events are not unrelated. They are examples of how big government inherently breeds powerful special interests that leverage government power to create policies for …
Fearing that the latest round of World Trade Organization negotiations are on the verge of collapse, the New York Times looks at what failure could mean for the world: Locking in lower farm subsidies would encourage direly needed agricultural investment in Africa and in poor nations that are struggling with soaring food prices. Curbing food export barriers would also push down prices. A breakdown of the Doha talks would also weaken the W.T.O. at a moment when the world needs a credible international body to mediate trade disputes. If the …
The World Trade Organization released a report today titled Trade in a Globalizing World. From the Executive Summary: International trade is integral to the process of globalization. Over many years, governments in most countries have increasingly opened their economies to international trade, whether through the multilateral trading system, increased regional cooperation or as part of domestic reform programmes. Trade and globalization more generally have brought enormous benefits to many countries and citizens. Trade has allowed nations to benefit from specialization and economies to produce at a more efficient scale. It …
