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

[Roxana Goldstein]

thanks Michel, 100% agree with your HO.
Best,
Roxana



2010/4/2 michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>

> 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.)
>
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