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

[michael gurstein]

Mueller:
 
The point was that Clinton was (unthinkingly) following the neo-liberal
orthodoxy and "inadvertently" destroyed the Haitian small holder rice
economy.  The recognition that this had taken place has been around in
thoughtful circles for years (as of course had the impacts of the
destruction of a subsistence rice (small holder) economy with no provision
or capacity for its replacement), but it took a crisis for Clinton to
recognize this and my hat off to him for being big enough to recognize and
learn from his mistakes.
 
And of course, the target for Haiti is not (realistically in the near term)
a developed country standard of living but should be at least significant
reductions in infant mortality, child malnutrition, and adult pauperization
all of which were exacerbated and precipitated by the "free marketeers" let
loose by Clinton and his co-conspirators in the World Bank, the IMF etc.etc.
 
M
 
 
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>
Date: Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 9:41 AM
Subject: RE: [governance] Clinton Admits: "Free" Trade is Harmful to 3rd
To: "governance at lists.cpsr.org" <governance at lists.cpsr.org>, michael
gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>


Gurstein:
Clinton didn't "admit" that free trade was bad for "3rd world countries" he
stated that it was bad for Haitian rice farmers. Which it may well have been
- some of them are not competitive. Farmers have been moved "off the land"
in every developing economy; typically that's part of the development
process.

Always missing from the free trade critics perspective is the harms done to
the 70-80% of the population who pay more for rice because of the trade
protectionism. So, how much more should all those poor people be forced to
pay for food so that the economy can conform to romantic notions of yeoman
farmers and self-sufficiency?

While the emotional impact of this article trades on the Haiti earthquake
disaster, I have trouble understanding how total dependence on local sources
of food production protects you against a local earthquake. I guess people
will use anything to milk such things to support their favored political
agenda.

The idea that a small island economy such as Haiti can be "self-sufficient"
in _anything_ is worth treating critically, if your target is developed
country standards of living. It reminds me of the crappy nonsense American
politicians like to say about making us "self-sufficient in oil." This plays
well in any election even though everyone knows that it's utter nonsense and
will never happen. How about maintaining good relations with other countries
and paying fair prices for things, instead of seeking an artificial
"national" self-sufficiency?

Or maybe we should make the state of New York self-sufficient in oil, food,
etc. and stop trading with the rest of the world. That'll do our economy a
world of good.

To add icing to the cake, ARIN's Curran agrees with a protectionist trade
policy - which would be disastrous if taken very far - because it suits his
very short term and narrow agenda of justifying ARIN's centralized control
of internet resources. Talk about a tail wagging a dog....

--MM


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Curran [mailto:jcurran at arin.net]
> Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 1:02 PM
> To: michael gurstein
> Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] Clinton Admits: "Free" Trade is Harmful to 3rd
>
> 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/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."
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