Long hours of programming over the weekend yielded two hours in Starbucks yesterday with the August issue of Prospect. Lots of interesting pieces: under WTO trading rules rich countries screw the poor. Poor Bangladesh notoriously pays as much duty on its exports to the US as does rich France. Vast US and EU farm subsidies block our markets to poor overseas producers. So scrap WTO and globalised trading rules? Not a bit of it says Kevin Watkins, head of research at Oxfam: the WTO’s multilateral rule-based trading regime has teeth and is infinitely preferable to the network of bilateral trading agreements that the US would otherwise impose.
Trade issues dwarf all other aspects of development. If we want poor countries to thrive we should buy their products. The WTO next meets at Cancun, Mexico, in September. Pray that the organisation does not wind up as marginalised as the UN.
Also this month: Aidan Foster-Carter on the coming fall of North Korea (I used to live 60 km from the border); the US and the EU compete for affection in south-east Europe. One of the most interesting ideas to emerge recently from the radical centre was Ackerman and Alstott’s proposal that we give every young adult a substantial ‘inheritance’; Samuel Brittan reviews the UK’s modest implementation of this.
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