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

[michael gurstein]

A useful lesson in this area as in others.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: John Curran [mailto:jcurran at arin.net] 
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 10:02 AM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Clinton Admits: "Free" Trade is Harmful to 3rd
World


Interesting article... There are indeed times when a more "efficient" 
distribution of resources via a free market doesn't actually create 
a more desirable outcome.  Economic models can be good in theory, but also
need to be tempered in implementation with consideration of the 
potential impacts in the real world (and particularly with respect to 
discontiguous events).

/John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 11:57 AM, michael gurstein wrote:

> 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/AR2010
> 032001
> 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 st 

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