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

Sun Apr 4 03:34:11 EDT 2010

History continues to teach us that we cannot cry over spilt milk
whilst the Impact of the US's Foreign policy pertaining to Trade has
been in the US's best interest. It is natural and normal in terms of
human relations to desire to be self-serving but now Hillary Clinton's
speech sends a strong market signal of greater expansive sense of
corporate responsibility or social responsibility which is rare for a
superpower to acknowledge taking responsibility for economic policy.
Employing the "sociological imagination" as a tool, every action has
the capacity impact onto remote players and so in the US State's
attempt to create price ceilings for US farmers and subsidising the
difference, the surplus would often be directed to third world
countries whose farmers can barely compete with the price differential
and the amount of food flooding their local markets.

In that sense a more targeted approach to enhancing markets is
beneficial instead of a blanket gain for all farmers in the US. This
is why forums such as this one is a opportune way of building
collaboration amongst policy writers, lawyers, economists etc.

The reality is that countries in the Pacific struggle with this as
Australia and New Zealand by virtue of the PICTA is now engaging
countries in the region on discussions concerning PACER PLUS. The
reality is that there is a food, energy and water crisis and blanket
Free Trade Agreements could prove detrimental as most of these
economies lack trade neogitation skills, lack of collaborative
engagement from the public sector and private sector. This is hugely
debated in the Pacific region and I thank you Michael and others for
your comments.

Sala (Fiji)

On 4/4/10, David Goldstein <goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Free trade would work much better if the developed world would not put up
> barriers to the developing world. America, are you listening? Well, OK,
> probably not. Protecting America's farmers is more important than assisting
> the developing world. And if the developed world, and in particular the US
> and to a lesser extent Europe, would allow the developing world to play on
> an equal footing, then free trade would largely be of benefit to the
> developing world.
>
> David
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
> To: John Curran <jcurran at arin.net>
> Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Sent: Sun, 4 April, 2010 3:25:22 AM
> Subject: RE: [governance] Clinton Admits: "Free" Trade is Harmful to 3rd
> World
>
> 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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-- 
Salanieta Tudrau Tamanikaiwaimaro
P.O.Box 17862
Suva
Fiji Islands

Cell: +679 9982851
Alternate Email: s.tamanikaiwaimaro at tfl.com.fj

"Wisdom is far better than riches."
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