[governance] Clinton Admits: "Free" Trade is Harmful to 3rd World

[michael gurstein]

This isn't directly about Internet Governance but rather about overall
issues underlying "Global Governance" of which Internet Governance is IMHO a
subset hence I think that the below might be of some interest:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032001
329_pf.html

Former US president admits trade policies were "a mistake"

During testimony before a US Senate committee three weeks ago, Clinton
admitted that requiring Haiti to lower its tariffs on rice imports made it
impossible for Haitian farmers to compete. The trade policy forced farmers
off the land and undercut Haiti's ability to feed itself.

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not
worked. It was a mistake," Clinton - now a UN special envoy to Haiti - told
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live
everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice
crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

Clinton´s apology attracted scant media attention in the US and none in
Canada. It was included as part of an Associated Press news agency report
that was published by the Washington Post on March 20. The AP report from
Haiti´s earthquake-ravaged capital, Port au Prince, suggests world leaders
are reconsidering trade and aid policies that make poor countries dependent
on rich ones. It quotes UN aid official John Holmes as saying that poor
countries, like Haiti, need to become more self-sufficient by rebuilding
their own food production. "A combination of food aid, but also cheap
imports have...resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that
has to be reversed," Holmes told AP. "That's a global phenomenon, but
Haiti´s a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

Neo-liberal policies forced on Haiti

The Clinton administration forced Jean Bertrand Aristide to agree to cut
rice tariffs drastically when the US restored the Haitian president to power
in October 1994. Aristide, Haiti´s first democratically elected president,
had been overthrown by a US-backed military coup in 1991. In return for $770
million in international loans and aid, Aristide was required to agree to a
business-friendly "structural adjustment" program that aside from cutting
food tariffs, also included freezing the minimum wage, cutting the size of
the civil service and privatizing public utilities. (Aristide annoyed the US
by being slow to implement such policies making Bill Clinton´s apology this
month all the more surprising.)

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t