Trade hypocrisy
Say the two words trade policy and most people will just switch off. This is a pity, because (are you still reading?) a global trade regime with fair rules has the potential to contribute substantially to serving the urgent needs of a human population swelling from 6 to 8 billion in one generation.
In the December 7 13 edition of The Economist essential reading for a handy slice of the worlds business and financial elite the chief US trade negotiator Robert Zoellick laid out an agenda for a new world trade order in an article titled Unleashing the Trade Winds. The debate, he says, is now over how not whether the United States is advancing free trade. Zoellick goes on:
America has stated its intentions plainly. We will promote free trade globally, regionally and bilaterally, while rebuilding support at home. By moving forward on multiple fronts, the United States can exert its leverage for openness, create a new competition in liberalisation, target the needs of developing countries, and create a fresh political dynamic by putting free trade on to the offensive.
Globolog invited leading international non-governmental organisations to respond to Zoellicks vision. This week, published for the first time anywhere, comes a stinging response from Oxfams head of research Kevin Watkins.
In Trade Hypocrisy, Kevin Watkins stresses that Oxfam is not against free trade: There is no question that carefully designed and properly sequenced trade liberalisation can be good for growth and poverty reduction. But, he says, the big bang liberalisation model envisaged under the US proposal is a prescription for de-industrialisation, rising inequality and poverty. According to Watkins, the US is an old-fashioned mercantilist power, combining protectionism at home with a commitment to free trade overseas.
In agriculture, says Zoellick, the US administrations goal is ultimately to eliminate tariffs and subsidies, including export subsidies. Watkins doesnt believe a word of it: The most likely outcome from the current round of World Trade Organisation talks [on trade liberalisation] is a repeat performance of the US-EU deals, where the worlds two agricultural superpowers agree to cut subsidies but then redefine what subsidy means so that they can continue supporting special interests.
Zoellick claims that the US is leading the way in implementing the Doha public health declaration (a commitment by rich country governments to ensure that trade-related intellectual property rules TRIPs do not compromise public health in developing countries by raising the costs of medicines).
No, says Watkins: the US has reneged on this commitment. The losers will be millions of poor households who will face higher costs for treatment and the prospect of increased vulnerability to ill health.
The issue is particularly topical because World Trade Organisation members face an end of year deadline for an agreement on a waiver to WTO intellectual property rules that will permit exports of cheap generic drugs under compulsory licence to countries with no manufacturing capacity of their own. At the time of writing the US insisted that it would not accept a draft accord on access to medicines for poor countries unless the scope was restricted to major epidemics such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Nestles McCarthy moment
Reading some of this stuff, you might come away with the impression that Globolog gives undue space to anti-American sentiments. So instead of bashing the US, lets bash an obscure small nation that strives to be armed to the teeth the Swiss.
Or Nestle, at any rate. This Swiss-based giant food multinational, which made profits of about US$3.9bn in the first six months of 2002, is demanding $6m in compensation from Ethiopia for a factory nationalised in 1975. The Ethiopian government has offered to pay Nestle about $1.5m a figure based on the current exchange rate between the dollar and the Ethiopian currency, the birr. But Nestle is insisting on a sum based on the exchange rate in force at the time of the nationalisation. Since then Ethiopia has undergone a holocaust of Marxist delusions, civil war and famine. Only in recent years has the country started to pull itself together. But right now it is faced with one of the gravest crises in its history. Upwards of six million people are facing imminent starvation (see Globolog 13 December, Enemies under six years old). But Nestle wants its money. Now. Otherwise, the corporation threatens, the investment climate in Ethiopia will go down the toilet.
Could this be Nestles McCarthy moment? I am thinking of one of the most dramatic political showdowns ever broadcast on television, the moment in 1954 that at least in popular history ended the anti-communist crusade of US Senator Joe McCarthy. Then, McCarthy and his henchman Roy Cohn met their match in the Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch, who in simple language, showed them to be monsters, lifting the spell that had kept so many silent for so long with a single, devastating question: Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?
In the real world, Nestle is likely to emerge with its social licence to operate untouched. But, hey, its Christmas: and lo, a miracle. The 20 December edition of the Financial Times reports Nestles most recent offer, to reinvest in Ethiopia all the proceeds from the claimed $6m, and to help alleviate the suffering of its population. Decency or desperation to avoid reputation melt down?
Baku-Ceyhan
On 3 December, Globolog reported a conversation with Barry Halton, Regional Affairs Director for a consortium led by the oil and gas giant BP, planning a massive energy project in the south Caucasus region. Halton was replying to critics in the NGO community who were concerned about the impact of the project on human rights and the environment (first reported in Globolog on 30 October, Beyond Pinocchio in the Caucasus). According to BP, the project will bring wealth and jobs to a region in desperate need.
This week, campaigners against a pipeline that is an essential component of the project respond to Mr Halton. Writing on behalf of the Baku-Ceyhan campaign, Anders Lustgarten of the Kurdish Human Rights Project accuses Halton of being evasive, of ignoring the likely financial costs of the pipeline to the Turkish government, and of being profoundly misleading with regard to transparency.
According to Lustgarten, BP has pressured the Georgian government to violate its own environmental legislation. BP uncritically accepts the rhetoric of the Turkish state with regard to treatment of its Kurdish population despite. It is not true that another company would pick up the project tomorrow if BP walked away, he says. BP has undertaken the work under immense pressure from the US government; for years, no other company would touch Baku-Ceyhan because of doubts over its financial viability.
The full response from the campaigners is posted on the discussion board of openDemocracys debate about Corporations and Power. Please post any comments or questions to this board.
Last week BP announced that the anticipated date for the completion of the projects funding process originally set for early in 2003 had been postponed for six months, because funders are seeking more information. This means that the project is neither inevitable nor imminent. Further discussions will play an important role in the ultimate decision.
Come to Iraq: Britney is already here
In addition to writing Globolog since early October, its been my privilege to work on a range of topics and ideas across the openDemocracy site, including matter relating to the Iraqi crisis. openDemocracys debate between two Iraqis on the future for their country, and an assessment of the refugee situation by two leading experts in the field are among the most thought-provoking pieces you will find anywhere on the web. What they will not do is cheer anybody up. In frosty London, waiting upon the kind attentions of Al-Qaida, we customarily celebrate this time of year as a season of goodwill, so I leave you with something more cheerful.
A friend of mine worked for the Red Cross in the Lebanon during a time when atrocities were a common occurrence in that country. But it was not all gloom. My friend built up a store of excellent local jokes. One of my favourites satirised the organised crime syndicates with a spoof advertisement, supposedly directed at tourists in Europe: Come to Lebanon your car is already here.
I was reminded of this when reading about a barber in Baghdad who chose to vote for Saddam Hussein in the recent Iraqi presidential election. Speaking freely to a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor, the barber a member of the relatively privileged Sunni religious group - said that the isolation of Iraq was not an issue. He has all the globalisation and global free trade he needs: He wants to be in Iraq His shirt is from China. He reads articles about Britney Spears. He enjoys Pepsi.
Amen, brother: Britney is already here.