It would be more tempting to post on the collapse of the talks if we had any reliable information on what was actually being offered and turned down under the various headings.
As it turned out it was India, and not Ireland, that said No to the agricultural package.
Thats very interesting Edo, thanks, will keep me going for a day or two. Was the African reference to "dealing with the banana outside the modalities of agriculture" a reference to Ireland do you think?
Thats very interesting Edo, thanks, will keep me going for a day or two. Was the African reference to "dealing with the banana outside the modalities of agriculture" a reference to Ireland do you think?
Do you have a picture of what the gains referred to on services and manufacturing are?
As it turned out it was India, and not Ireland, that said No to the agricultural package.
Well that was because they apparently couldn't reconcile their position on agriculture with the US. That's grand, we avoid a dis-satisfying deal and don't get the blame for wrecking it! This is the best of all worlds!
Thats very interesting Edo, thanks, will keep me going for a day or two. Was the African reference to "dealing with the banana outside the modalities of agriculture" a reference to Ireland do you think?
Do you have a picture of what the gains referred to on services and manufacturing are?
Those gains are apparently 20 years away in the future. Pádraig Walshe was on the radio saying that those gains which are supposed to come to compensate for losses in agriculture don't come into effect until 2025/27. A very poor deal was stopped, it seems. It's a great day today!
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:06 am
Well Ard - given the number of sheer whoppers that have come from Padraig Walshe and the IFA Pro in the last while on the propogranda offensive - I wouldn't be putting too much trust in anything he says and he is being, how shall I put it, quite economical with the facts - if not with the truth.
this is my opinion
a lot of the time on things like this - you have to read between the lines here - Everybody knew that Agriculture would be a "hot" issue - so it was convenient for everybody that it would break down over an agricultural issue - which in reality is covering up the main issue here - that India and China do not want to open up their services and manufacturing markets to US and EU businesses.
Think about it for a moment - India and China are massive food importers - with their massive and rising populations - they havent a hope in hell of feeding their people the foods they require - particularly the rising and affluent middleclasses - who want more than just rice for breakfast ,lunch and dinner. Why they would sink the talks over the theoretical right to impose tarriffs over the importation and exportation of food (what exportation - other than tea leaves and opium?) simply does not make sense - They are importing vast amounts of foodstuffs from Australia,NZ, Africa, the US and South America and will be for the forseeable future as they get wealthier and in a free market with rising transportation and logistics costs - their already heavily subsidised agricultural sector should have no problems selling their foods on their home markets.
However - it was the opening up of their services and industrial sectors that would have given the most problems.
As an exporter of industrial manufacturing equipment and services - I know how fucking hard it is to do business with these countries and its all one way traffic with these guys.
To do business in the domestic Indian service sector- you have to set up in India, take on an Indian partner who owns at least 45% of the business- joint venture and then you have to do business with their legal and government sector - which makes the Irish Civil service look almost scandanavian in its efficency and honesty. If you are operating a software business here and dont require anything else other than internet connection into India - this is a complete pain in the ass and simply isn't worth yourwhile - we (EU) place no such impositions on Indians doing the opposite here - or operating call centres and accounting services into the EU market - so its a protected sheltered marketplace in these sectors - kind of like the closed shop our legal boyos have here.
As regards China, Jaysus - its very simple - in essence - the Chinese want to import nothing from you into their country that they can make themselves or think that they can make themselves - but at the same time they expect you to lower your tariffs and let their exports flood onto your market places. Again you have to set up a subsidary there with a chinese partner or you will face immense difficulties. The tarriffs on imports of manufactured goods and western technology is punitive, the paperwork mountainous and intimidating and getting paid at the end of the day - a severe problem and if you are selling technology into China - you better hope you make your fortune before you are at a trade show and see similar technology that looks,feels and works exactly like your invention - it is of course - but what can you do as China doesnt recognise intellectual property and patents - India is the same when it comes to pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
The potential deal on the table would have gone a long way to addressing these issues and the imbalance that is there in regard to this - things the EU and the US conceded before as part of the deal to keep our agribusinesses protected. That is what Doha was about - addressing the anomalies and starting to rebalance the playing field - The EU has a natural advantage in services and high technology and this deal would have given us a real chance of exploiting the investment made here in those sectors and allowing us to use our natural advantage in this while we still have it and allowing India and China exploit theirs - however the Indians and Chinese have their own massive vested interests and it was their unwillingness to concede even an inch on Services that sunk these talks - tho it wouldn't have looked well to have admitted this upfront - so a scapegoat was required and Mandelson was on the money when he said it was a "Trivial issue" that collapsed the talks.
I've been watching these talks for over 4 years now and its like watching 10 giant games of chess simultaneously - a lot of it is smoke and mirrors and after while you get used to the fact that all the games are connected - a move in one game might not be related to that particular game - but a strategic move in another game - because they are all connected. Its quite fascinating in a way - there are no bad guys or good guys - just each nation or bloc trying to get the best deal possible.
The immediate effects of this - well like Lisbon - the world wont collapse - but the longer term effects will be interesting.
The immediate winners of this will be China, India and Brazil. This could be a watershed moment - like I have been saying for quite a while now - banging my head against the wall more like - America and Europes time in the limelight is passing - this could be seen as the last chance to get a world deal on vaguely good terms for the West - The BRICs are the coming nations - now the way is open for lots of bi-lateral deals and very soon the EU and the US could find themselves cut out of markets all over the world - thats the long term effect here - we are becoming inconsequential, divided and weak and everybody is sensing that. I know that will probably suit our resident anarchist and anti-globalists here down to the ground - then again They wont be picking up the bill for this - I've already paid my part of the bill with my job -I'll be finished up in October - currently I am taking apart our facilities here piece by piece and shipping them over to our Chinese sister company as it is now there and behind Chinese import barriers is where the action is for the reasons I've explained above - it makes more sense to go the Chinese way as conditions stand at the moment - on top of our fading competitiveness - the failure of these talks to get the chinese to lower their protective barriers means its totally uneconomic aswell as futile for us to manufacture here in Europe.
Oh well - sure at least our agricultural industry is safe - its worth the sacrifice.
Anybody know of any openings for a cowherder or shepherd? - even a labourer? and I have a degree in shovelling shit
Im done
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:52 am
Edo wrote:
The potential deal on the table would have gone a long way to addressing these issues and the imbalance that is there in regard to this - things the EU and the US conceded before as part of the deal to keep our agribusinesses protected. That is what Doha was about - addressing the anomalies and starting to rebalance the playing field - The EU has a natural advantage in services and high technology and this deal would have given us a real chance of exploiting the investment made here in those sectors and allowing us to use our natural advantage in this while we still have it and allowing India and China exploit theirs - however the Indians and Chinese have their own massive vested interests and it was their unwillingness to concede even an inch on Services that sunk these talks - tho it wouldn't have looked well to have admitted this upfront - so a scapegoat was required and Mandelson was on the money when he said it was a "Trivial issue" that collapsed the talks.
This would be extremely damaging to developing nations. All developed nations protected their native industries behind tarriffs and using various infant industry protection policies**. To deny todays developing of the same route to development is not about " addressing the anomalies and starting to rebalance the playing field". Doha was certainly not about that! The reality was far different.
What is not a matter of debate is that the Doha Round was never meant to be a round to end poverty, as the Group of Eight leaders meeting in St. Petersburg depicted it. The idea that the Doha Round is a “development round” could not be farther from the truth. At the very outset of the Doha negotiations in November 2001, the developed country governments rejected the demand of the majority of countries that the talks focus on the hard task of implementing past commitments and avoid initiating a new round of trade liberalization. From the very start, the aim of the developed countries was to push for greater market openings from the developing countries while making minimal concessions of their own. Invoking development was simply a cynical ploy to make the process less unpalatable. According to the Financial Times, these “poor tactics” backfired.
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:56 pm
Article from McWilliams over the weekend - first time I've seen a column which broadly shares my own view on the collapse of WTO and the future economic direction we all may be taking.
The world is beginning to close its borders, and what follows will be seismic.
Are we seeing the return of protectionism, narrow gauge xenophobia and the end of the cosmopolitan force that was globalisation? Are we seeing the first of many instances where the EU and the US are unable to force their will on the rest of the world because they are no longer powerful enough? If this is so, what will these trends mean for us? Last weekend, China and India in particular decided to play hardball with the world, forcing the abandonment of the world trade talks. For India’s ruling party, this might have been an expedient political victory ahead of an election in which its farmers will have a pivotal say; but is it in the long-term interest of a country to get rich by playing ‘‘beggar my neighbour’’ with its friends? For the first time in a generation, efforts to expand trade and increase the flow of information have been thwarted. While no one denies that China and India - ‘‘Chindia’’ - are big enough to be heard, there is something more than just trade talks going on. It is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a profound structural change in the way the world runs itself? Will we see globalism replaced by nationalism, and the financial good of the many being hijacked by the narrow interests of the few? The collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks is a serious blow to Ireland, particularly if it is followed to its ultimate conclusion. Irish farmers might be happy, but they have the most to gain from open trade in the long-run due to the simple fact that the price of food is likely to rise over the coming years. The world needs more trade, not less. China and India, in particular, need trade if these pair of giants are to pull their billions of people out of poverty. It is a simple economic fact that no country ever got rich without trade. Trade is the cornerstone of modern economics and is based on the straightforward concept of comparative advantage. According to this basic idea, it is smarter to concentrate on the things you are good at, become productive in producing this stuff and use the earnings you get from it to buy the stuff you can’t produce. Furthermore, being open to trade exposes countries and companies to competition from abroad and new techniques, which must be copied and bettered at home if your goods are to sell. It is a discipline that tends to lead to best practice. If you doubt this just examine the experiment that was East and West Germany. One people, one culture, two systems, one definitive result. History is littered with examples of how countries thrived when trade was free - not just economically, but socially as well. Traditionally, when people can trade, they are free to mix, exchange ideas and technology. In the past, countries that embraced free trade also tended to be the most liberal, with the best social and human rights records. However, history teaches us that there are moments of profound change where the people reject free trade and all that goes with it, usually for some utopian and undeliverable vision. This can lead to monumental social change. Could the world now be at such a tipping point? One hundred years ago, a best-selling book in Europe was a tome called Degeneration, written by a Hungarian intellectual called Max Nordau. Nordau, who shot to fame as an author, went on to be a vociferous Zionist and one of the driving forces behind moves to create the state of Israel. Degeneration was translated into numerous languages, because the central idea in the book struck a chord all over Europe. The thesis was simple: Nordau argued that open trade and the dominance of economics and finance in political discourse had led to a corruption of European nations. He contended that European elites were now degenerate. They had become cosmopolitan and divorced from the people, from the soil and from everything that made European countries unique. His central message was that these cosmopolitans had betrayed the ordinary people with their preening narcissism in art and literature, their internationalism in politics, their alliances and affectations and their willingness to exploit the people’s labour in order to create a deracinated elite. Nordau’s solution was to call for a regeneration of the people from the bottom up. He suggested that patriotism could replace internationalism and that the people could be purified of this degeneration by going back to basics, moving away from free trade and the free movement of people, returning to the soil and self-sufficiency. Nordau was the spiritual king of the many nationalist movements springing up in Europe at the time. His DNA can be seen in the politics of Eamon De Valera, Arthur Griffin and Michael Collins. Unfortunately - and ironically given his subsequent Zionism- his fingerprints are all over Nazism too. What makes Nordau interesting in the context of the failed WTO talks, is that his message started with trade. Under the cloak of standing up for the little guy against some ephemeral elite, Nordau tapped into a discontent that was real. The elite had become removed from the people, they seemed to swan around telling the masses what was good for them and their income had exploded to being multiples of the average worker. These are many disturbing similarities between now and the turn of the 19th century. Many of the same arguments are resonant today, beginning with the argument here against Lisbon. It amounted to a coalition of rejectionism rather than a coherent political worldview. Similarly, our farmers are driven by a narrow perspective on trade. They are possibly unaware that their stance on this crucial issue might put their best friends and neighbours out of work. It is easy to reject. It is much more difficult to construct. The rejection of the WTO, although remote, is part of a rejectionist trend. Who knows, it might be positive. But a constructive alternative hasn’t yet been articulated. Like the vacuum Nordau left at the beginning of this century, God knows what might fill it
Yes - we are saying No to every thing at the moment - but the naysayers are very short on viable alternatives.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:35 pm
Edo wrote:
Article from McWilliams over the weekend - first time I've seen a column which broadly shares my own view on the collapse of WTO and the future economic direction we all may be taking.
The world is beginning to close its borders, and what follows will be seismic.
Are we seeing the return of protectionism, narrow gauge xenophobia and the end of the cosmopolitan force that was globalisation? Are we seeing the first of many instances where the EU and the US are unable to force their will on the rest of the world because they are no longer powerful enough? If this is so, what will these trends mean for us? Last weekend, China and India in particular decided to play hardball with the world, forcing the abandonment of the world trade talks. For India’s ruling party, this might have been an expedient political victory ahead of an election in which its farmers will have a pivotal say; but is it in the long-term interest of a country to get rich by playing ‘‘beggar my neighbour’’ with its friends? For the first time in a generation, efforts to expand trade and increase the flow of information have been thwarted. While no one denies that China and India - ‘‘Chindia’’ - are big enough to be heard, there is something more than just trade talks going on. It is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a profound structural change in the way the world runs itself? Will we see globalism replaced by nationalism, and the financial good of the many being hijacked by the narrow interests of the few? The collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks is a serious blow to Ireland, particularly if it is followed to its ultimate conclusion. Irish farmers might be happy, but they have the most to gain from open trade in the long-run due to the simple fact that the price of food is likely to rise over the coming years. The world needs more trade, not less. China and India, in particular, need trade if these pair of giants are to pull their billions of people out of poverty. It is a simple economic fact that no country ever got rich without trade. Trade is the cornerstone of modern economics and is based on the straightforward concept of comparative advantage. According to this basic idea, it is smarter to concentrate on the things you are good at, become productive in producing this stuff and use the earnings you get from it to buy the stuff you can’t produce. Furthermore, being open to trade exposes countries and companies to competition from abroad and new techniques, which must be copied and bettered at home if your goods are to sell. It is a discipline that tends to lead to best practice. If you doubt this just examine the experiment that was East and West Germany. One people, one culture, two systems, one definitive result. History is littered with examples of how countries thrived when trade was free - not just economically, but socially as well. Traditionally, when people can trade, they are free to mix, exchange ideas and technology. In the past, countries that embraced free trade also tended to be the most liberal, with the best social and human rights records. However, history teaches us that there are moments of profound change where the people reject free trade and all that goes with it, usually for some utopian and undeliverable vision. This can lead to monumental social change. Could the world now be at such a tipping point? One hundred years ago, a best-selling book in Europe was a tome called Degeneration, written by a Hungarian intellectual called Max Nordau. Nordau, who shot to fame as an author, went on to be a vociferous Zionist and one of the driving forces behind moves to create the state of Israel. Degeneration was translated into numerous languages, because the central idea in the book struck a chord all over Europe. The thesis was simple: Nordau argued that open trade and the dominance of economics and finance in political discourse had led to a corruption of European nations. He contended that European elites were now degenerate. They had become cosmopolitan and divorced from the people, from the soil and from everything that made European countries unique. His central message was that these cosmopolitans had betrayed the ordinary people with their preening narcissism in art and literature, their internationalism in politics, their alliances and affectations and their willingness to exploit the people’s labour in order to create a deracinated elite. Nordau’s solution was to call for a regeneration of the people from the bottom up. He suggested that patriotism could replace internationalism and that the people could be purified of this degeneration by going back to basics, moving away from free trade and the free movement of people, returning to the soil and self-sufficiency. Nordau was the spiritual king of the many nationalist movements springing up in Europe at the time. His DNA can be seen in the politics of Eamon De Valera, Arthur Griffin and Michael Collins. Unfortunately - and ironically given his subsequent Zionism- his fingerprints are all over Nazism too. What makes Nordau interesting in the context of the failed WTO talks, is that his message started with trade. Under the cloak of standing up for the little guy against some ephemeral elite, Nordau tapped into a discontent that was real. The elite had become removed from the people, they seemed to swan around telling the masses what was good for them and their income had exploded to being multiples of the average worker. These are many disturbing similarities between now and the turn of the 19th century. Many of the same arguments are resonant today, beginning with the argument here against Lisbon. It amounted to a coalition of rejectionism rather than a coherent political worldview. Similarly, our farmers are driven by a narrow perspective on trade. They are possibly unaware that their stance on this crucial issue might put their best friends and neighbours out of work. It is easy to reject. It is much more difficult to construct. The rejection of the WTO, although remote, is part of a rejectionist trend. Who knows, it might be positive. But a constructive alternative hasn’t yet been articulated. Like the vacuum Nordau left at the beginning of this century, God knows what might fill it
Yes - we are saying No to every thing at the moment - but the naysayers are very short on viable alternatives.
I certainly agree that the rejection of the WTO proposals by India and China represents a sea change, but I think it is as much a result of the economic weakness of the US as of the growing strength of India and China. What's new in the talks as well is the tussle for trading space between the growing states like Brazil and India.
The WTO is about power and access to markets. I don't think the idea that the WTO is about free and equal trade resulting in the best of all possible worlds stands up. There are winners and losers and the powerful win. Protectionism is a reaction to crisis, or to a position of weakness. I think that there is a trend that way, but that it has come as a reaction to economic uncertainty and insecurity, rather than as an ideological stance.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:39 pm
I like McWilliams generally and I would forgive him the little pomposities he sometimes falls into. The article is good. Essentially the people have lost faith in globalisation and will soon be looking elsewhere. These are dangerous times indeed.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:03 pm
Some posts copied over from the Health Services thread:
johnfás said
Quote :
The HSE is gearing up for semi-privatisation and it is going to be an unmitigated failure. Especially given the economic period which we are entering where the numbers holding private health insurance will fall, not rise.
by Slim Buddha Yesterday at 2:34 pm
Quote :
It is much worse than that, johnfàs. The General Agreement on Trade in Services, a main pillar of WTO Law, allows for the inclusion of all public services to be "liberalised" (privatised). Only health is specifically included in the General Exceptions in Article XIV which would enable our government to ring-fence health and keep it, in the public interest, out of the hands of the profiteers. No chance of that happening under Harney. When we list services under the special commitments schedule, we commit to allowing services to be supplied in any one of four specified ways form anywhere, inside or outside the country. When we draw up our rules on domestic regulation in the field of qualification requirements and procedures, technical standards and licensing requirements, we cannot include rules which may be construed as"more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service", as stipulated in Article VI.
Once we commit specific health services to become open to privatisation, there is NO going back. The GATS commits us to enable market access and, crucially, to progressive liberalisation (privatisation) of the services. There is no possibility of a trial period or anything like that. No review after 2 years to assess the effect on the services. Once it's done, it's written in stone.
Cactus flower said
Quote :
Would you be able to say when it was that we voted for this?
Slim Buddha said
Quote :
I don't recall anybody voting for this but it became international binding law in 1995 and our very own Peter Sutherland, failed Fine Gael candidate for Dublin North-West in 1977 (a certain B. Ahern got the seat Sudsy was fighting for) was very much involved in the birth of the WTO and the body of international law that arrived with it.
Quote :
The GATS is an extraordinary document. It is so badly written it deserves some sort of a prize. However, it can and will be used to deadly effect by the privateers because the critical paragraphs I mentioned above (Progressive liberalisation is covered by Article XIX) are basically an agenda for privatisation. Despite the escape clause in Article XIV, health will be privatised by Harney. Specific commitments under Schedule 8 (Health) can include Hospital Services, Other Human Health Services, Social Services and Other, so anything can be caught under these terms. Harney can privatise the whole lot and then turn around and clain that our mambership of the WTO requires to "progressively liberalise" the health service. The entire clumsy GATS structure and deliberately vague phraseology used in it leads to a high level of confusion. But this will suit Harney down to the ground.
I don't know how the workings ofthe WTO gets covered by the media in Ireland. It gets a lot of coverage here and I am not just talking about the farmers. Because of the very large Swiss pharmaceutical industry, the workings of the TRIPS gets major coverage. I would be interested to hear of how the Irish media covers the WTO apart from the predictable stuff about farmers.
by cactus flower Yesterday at 9:19 pm
Quote :
My impression is that things like the GATT and WTO are covered if at all mainly on the business pages. Any other coverage tends to be about the "success" or "failure" of talks rather than the substance of what is being talked out. The farmer's lobby is most likely source of critical comment.
Quote :
Over the past fifteen years there has been great positivity about benefits to Ireland of being one of the world's most open economies. As far as I recall there has not been a political debate at any stage about the push for privatisation and deregulation. The neoliberal agenda has penetrated our lives without any real public debate.
I think this is one of the many reasons for the No vote: people sense that important things we had have been given away, and when we saw another badly written document, we assumed that it was booby trapped.
by Slimbuddha
Quote :
Quite amazing really, that so much hot air has been expended on Lisbon and yet the body of WTO law (close to 60 international agreements in all of which the GATT, the GATS and the TRIPS are the most important), which will have a direct and lasting effect on our economy, which will shape the manner by which we receive services and has the power to influence directly to determine the nature of those services, is not debated at all. Except, of course, for the concerns of farmers, which are really a sideshow in the greater scheme of things.
by cactus flower
Quote :
Where should we start?
by Slim Buddha Yesterday at 10:04 pm
Quote :
If I was in Ireland, I would ask Varadker or someone like him to table a written PQ to ask the Minister for Health the extent of the specific commitments which Ireland has committed to in the GATS schedules, the nature of the services delivery outlined in the specific commitment, the form and extent of the domestic regulation we stipulated if any under Article XI and, if we have given no specific commitment to date, whether the government will consider exercising the general exemption clause under Article XIV.
Quote :
At least it would get an answer out of her in the Dail. She would never answer this in an interview or, indeed, anywhere else.
by cactus flower
Quote :
Does Ireland negotiate this directly or through the EU? Is there somewhere we can read the ABC of this up, so I won't have to bother you with stupid questions?
by Slim Buddha Today at 6:32 am
Quote :
Cactusflower, your questions are by no means stupid and I find it interesting that somebody as well-informed and clued-in as yourself finds the whole WTO thing a bit foggy. That is understandable when it is portrayed in our media as a struggle between our brave farmers and Peter Mandelson.
There is no ABC per se on this and the best place to start getting information on this is here
In book form, the best I have come across is "The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organisation" by van den Bossche published by Cambridge. It explains in the clearest terms what is, after all, a very complex body of law.
The web is full of pages and sources of criticism of the WTO and its legal structures, particularly from international organisations representing public services. Reading Klein, Stiglitz, Bakan, Saul, Hertz and so on gives one the big picture but nailing down the insidious nature of the GATS in one source is next to impossible. But you can ask me questions on this anytime, cactusflower, and I will do my best to answer them.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:51 am
I forgot to mention the principle of "single undertaking". Single undertaking is a compulsory discipline when joining the WTO. It commits ALL members of the WTO to sign up to ALL the agreements. No exceptions. No opt-outs.
To answer your question, cactusflower, whether Ireland negotiates this directly, you can see that there is little or no room for negotiation. But the Irish government alone can decide the extent to which we commit ourselves in putting public services "into play" as it were. Only the government decides the extent to which they are prepared to privatise public services.
Only health can be totally ring-fenced under the terms of the GATS Art. XIV. Education, water supply etc. cannot. We negotiate, if that is the word, positions as part of a trading block through the EU eg. farm subsidies. But only our government can commit us to specific commitments.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:16 pm
Thanks Slim Buddha. I'm going to home in on what Stiglitz and Klein say about the WTO and the GATT (and TRIPS) this week and will be on the book club sofa Sunday evening if anyone else wants to have a go at this.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:30 pm
cactus flower wrote:
Thanks Slim Buddha. I'm going to home in on what Stiglitz and Klein say about the WTO and the GATT (and TRIPS) this week and will be on the book club sofa Sunday evening if anyone else wants to have a go at this.
While I am an admirer of Klein, I find she is not very good on WTO detail. She has a great many other qualities but the Shock Doctrine is, in terms of understanding how the mechanics of WTO law works to the disadvantage of developing countries, very broad brush stuff. She doesn't go near the GATS, as far as I can make out. Stiglitz is better but his emphasis is on the unfairnmess of the GATT to developing nations. Which is all true. But none of them has addressed what we have been talking about here - the effect of the GATS on developed countries accepting the "liberalisation" of their public services by other developed countries TNCs.
What I find instructional is a read through the case history of Antigua v USA to see where we are with the GATS interpretation (there is very little GATS litigation so far) and the attitude of the USA trade people when they do not get their way.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:08 pm
Sorry, cactusflower, I should have provided links for you but it is rather difficult at the moment (because I am at work )
Anyway, one of the interesting elements of this is that eventually the WTO disputes panel (remember, these meet in secret) found for Antigua. Antigua said that the damages could not be economically recouped through the provisions of the GATS. They asked instead to be allowed to withhold payment of intellectual property payments on copyright and patent payments through the TRIPS. Amazingly, the WTO said yes. The USA protested and, at one point, threatened to press the nuclear button and unilaterally withdraw from the GATS agreement and, if necessary, the WTO. Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The sum involved amounts only to about $5 million but its the principle of the thing that's bugging the US. It is still not resolved.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:26 pm
I forgot to mention, cactusflower, that as a result of the WTO ruling basically allowing Antigua "rip-off" US IP under the TRIPS, Antigua is now referred to as the "Pirate of the Caribbean"!
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:41 pm
[quote="Edo"]
Quote :
According to this basic idea, it is smarter to concentrate on the things you are good at, become productive in producing this stuff and use the earnings you get from it to buy the stuff you can’t produce. Furthermore, being open to trade exposes countries and companies to competition from abroad and new techniques, which must be copied and bettered at home if your goods are to sell. It is a discipline that tends to lead to best practice.
All evidence suggests McWilliams is wrong here.** McWilliams uses the example of Germany. Yet Germany is a textbook case of the use of tarriffs and infant industry protection in her development. The only other western developed nation that used the policies more ardently would probably be the US and the UK.
This use of an example which runs completely counter to the argument in unsurprising for those that preach 'do not what we do or have done, but what we say'.
Germany is a country that is today commonly known as the home of infant industry protection, both intellectually and in terms of policies. However, historically speaking, tariff protection actually played a much less important role in the economic development of Germany than that of Britain or the United States . The tariff protection for industry in Prussia before the 1834 German customs union under its leadership (Zollverein), and that subsequently accorded to German industry in general remained mild (Blackbourn, 1997, p. 117). In 1879, the Chancellor of Germany , Otto von Bismarck introduced a great tariff increase in order to cement the political alliance between the Junkers (landlords) and the heavy industrialists--the so-called “marriage of iron and rye.” However, even after this, substantial protection was accorded only to the key heavy industries, especially the iron and steel industry, and industrial protection in general remained low (Blackbourn, 1997, p. 320). As it can be seen from table 1, the level of protection in German manufacturing was one of the lowest among comparable countries throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
The relatively low tariff protection does not, however, mean that the German state took a laissez-faire approach to economic development. Especially under Frederick William I (1713–1740) and Frederick the Great (1740–1786) in the eighteenth century, the Prussian state pursued a range of policies to promote new industries--especially textiles (linen above all), metals, armaments, porcelain, silk, and sugar refining--by providing monopoly rights, trade protection, export subsidies, capital investments, and skilled workers from abroad (Trebilcock, 1981, pp. 136–52). From the early nineteenth century, the Prussian state also invested in infrastructure--the most famous example being the government financing of road building in the Ruhr (Milward & Saul, 1979, p. 417). It also implemented educational reform, which not only involved building new schools and universities but also the re-orientation of their teaching from theology to science and technology--this at a time when science and technology was not taught in Oxford or Cambridge (Kindleberger, 1978, p. 191). There were some growth-retarding effects of Prussian government intervention, such as the opposition to the development of banking (Kindleberger, 1978, pp. 199–200). However, on the whole, we cannot but agree with the statement by Milward & Saul (1979) that “[t]o successive industrialising countries the attitude taken by early nineteenth-century German governments seemed much more nearly in touch with economic realities than the rather idealised and frequently simplified model of what had happened in Britain or France which economists presented to them” (p. 418).
After the 1840s, with the growth of the private sector, the involvement of the German state in industrial development became less pronounced (Trebilcock, 1981, p. 77). However, this did not mean a withdrawal of the state, rather a transition from a directive to a guiding role. During the Second Reich (1870–1914), there was further erosion in state capacity and involvement in relation to industrial development, although it still played an important role through its tariff policy and cartel policy (Tilly, 1996).
Particularly between the trade policy reform of its first Prime Minister Robert Walpole in 1721 and its adoption of free trade around 1860, Britain used very dirigiste trade and industrial policies, involving measures very similar to what countries like Japan and Korea later used in order to develop their industries. During this period, it protected its industries a lot more heavily than did France, the supposed dirigiste counterpoint to its free-trade, free-market system. Given this history, argued Friedrich List, the leading German economist of the mid-19th century, Britain preaching free trade to less advanced countries like Germany and the USA was like someone trying to “kick away the ladder” with which he had climbed to the top.
List was not alone in seeing the matter in this light. Many American thinkers shared this view. Indeed, it was American thinkers like Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the USA, and the (now-forgotten) economist Daniel Raymond, who first systematically developed the infant industry argument. Indeed, List, who is commonly known as the father of the infant industry argument, in fact started out as a free-trader (he was an ardent supporter of German customs union – Zollverein) and learnt about this argument during his exile in the USA during the 1820s
Little known today, the intellectual interaction between the USA and Germany during the 19th century did not end there. The German Historical School – represented by people like Wilhelm Roscher, Bruno Hildebrand, Karl Knies, Gustav Schmoller, and Werner Sombart – attracted a lot of American economists in the late 19th century. The patron saint of American Neoclassical economics, John Bates Clark, in whose name the most prestigious award for young (under 40) American economists is given today, went to Germany in 1873 and studied the German Historical School under Roscher and Knies, although he gradually drifted away from it. Richard Ely, one of the leading American economists of the time, also studied under Knies and influenced the American Institutionalist School through his disciple, John Commons. Ely was one of the founding fathers of the American Economic Association; to this day, the biggest public lecture at the Association’s annual meeting is given in Ely’s name, although few of the present AEA members would know who he was.
If South Korean and Japan had stuck to producing wigs and silk they'd have been pretty good at it, but it's unlikely we'd have seen Toyota.
McWilliams is another mainstream neoliberal economist who stick close to the doctrine no matter what the evidence to the contrary. He 'spices' things up with his silly double barrel names for the ordinary but underneath there's really no difference between this and Friedman's flat world cant.
Almost all rich countries got wealthy by protecting infant industries and limiting foreign investment. But these countries are now denying poor ones the same chance to grow by forcing free-trade rules on them before they are strong enough
The year was 1958 and the country was Japan. The company was Toyota, and the car was called the Toyopet. Toyota started out as a manufacturer of textile machinery and moved into car production in 1933. The Japanese government kicked out General Motors and Ford in 1939, and bailed out Toyota with money from the central bank in 1949. Today, Japanese cars are considered as "natural" as Scottish salmon or French wine, but less than 50 years ago, most people, including many Japanese, thought the Japanese car industry simply should not exist.
[....]
Tariffs were not the only tool of trade policy used by rich countries. When deemed necessary for the protection of infant industries, they banned imports or imposed import quotas. They also gave export subsidies—sometimes to all exports (Japan and Korea) but often to specific items (in the 18th century, Britain gave export subsidies to gunpowder, sailcloth, refined sugar and silk). Some of them also gave a rebate on the tariffs paid on the imported industrial inputs used for manufacturing export goods, in order to encourage such exports. Many believe that this measure was invented in Japan in the 1950s, but it was in fact invented in Britain in the 17th century.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:47 pm
Welcome, Pax, to the WTO-WTF thread. All contributions and contributors welcome. While cactusflower and I were discussing the extent to which the GATS leaves our health service open to "liberalisation" by Harney's friends, any WTO comment will find a home on this thread.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:27 pm
Slim Buddha wrote:
Welcome, Pax, to the WTO-WTF thread. All contributions and contributors welcome. While cactusflower and I were discussing the extent to which the GATS leaves our health service open to "liberalisation" by Harney's friends, any WTO comment will find a home on this thread.
No, problem. If I get too longwinded just cut-n-paste me to another thread!
But that's a very interesting discussion about how we could still ringfence health if we wanted to. I had a vague memory that we could but I was also under the assumption that we could do similar in education? (I mean 'could' here as in terms of the GATs and not our democratic right to or not).
So basically we are not being forced to not ringfence health due to our economic situation or through structural adjustment programmes and neither have we directly voted for it?
With regard to development and the WTO, I think it's fair to say that many of today's developed nations would not be developed if they were constrained by the WTO. McWilliams' argument on comparative advantage is typical and was even given historically as contraindicitive advice by the British in order to prevent Germany and the US from developing! Such advice was not needed if you were a colony of an imperial power however...
Opponents of free trade often point out that the comparative advantage argument for free trade has lost its legitimacy in a globally integrated world--in which capital is free to move internationally. Herman Daly, a leading voice in the discipline of ecological economics, emphasizes that although Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage is one of the most elegant theories in economics, its application to the present day is illogical: "Free capital mobility totally undercuts Ricardo's comparative advantage argument for free trade in goods, because that argument is explicitly and essentially premised on capital (and other factors) being immobile between nations. Under the new globalization regime, capital tends simply to flow to wherever costs are lowest--that is, to pursue absolute advantage."[5]
In Kicking Away the Ladder: Development in Historical Perspective and Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism , Ha-Joon Chang argues that the principle of comparative advantage was used by advanced industrial countries to keep undeveloped countries on agriculture instead of developing their own manufactures (which would have made them competition for the industrialized nations). Similar to the way that those individuals who have accumulated much capital support a "free" contract between themselves and wage-laborers, in order to employ them for labor and then sell the products of their labor back to them after taking a profit, those countries which have already industrialized prefer "free" trade between nations, in order to maintain a similar type of dependence of the undeveloped world upon the already developed world: with developed world capital employing the labor of citizens of undeveloped nations, then selling the products of their labor back to them through international trade (after taking a profit).
(my itallic emphasis)
Btw Walden Bello and "focus on the global south" are also pretty good on this WTO stuff.
When the Uruguay Round that established the World Trade Organization (WTO) was negotiated from 1986 to 1994, the developing countries were largely bystanders. Governments that had been members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were dragooned into its successor organization by the threat that if they did not come in on the ground floor, they would be subjected to a painful accession process should they decide to join it later. In the meantime, they were told, they would, like North Korea, become isolated from global trade. Preferring the devil they knew to the devil they didn’t, most members of the GATT signed on a document that subordinated all dimensions of a nation’s economic life to the goal of expanding international trade.
Most had not had the time to really absorb the fine print of the 500 plus pages, something that was evident in the case of Indonesia. When the Indonesian government declared in 1997 that it would build up its car industry by applying the so-called “local content” policy, or mandating the sourcing of a growing portion of a car’s parts to local industries, the US, EU, and Japan—the home countries of the big car corporations—informed it that this would be a violation of the Trade-Related Investment Measures Agreement (TRIMs) of the Uruguay Round and that they would haul Indonesia to a WTO dispute-settlement court. Smaller countries than Indonesia, with minuscule trade bureaucracies, were even more disadvantaged......
Last edited by Pax on Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:55 pm; edited 1 time in total
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:03 pm
Pax, we can ring-fence health completely under Article XIV (General Exemptions) of the GATS if we wanted to but it seems we dont. Education, water-supply etc are not covered by Art. XIV.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:39 am
Slim Buddha wrote:
Pax, we can ring-fence health completely under Article XIV (General Exemptions) of the GATS if we wanted to but it seems we dont. Education, water-supply etc are not covered by Art. XIV.
That was very interesting Pax and Slimbuddha. I'll follow your links some time today Pax.
Slimbuddha - is the business of health exemption a done deal? Can it still be expempted or is it too late?
I tried the WTO website this morning to start my education and found it had been hacked:
Quote :
WTO NEWS: 2006 PRESS RELEASES Press/388 November 13, 2006
Listen to Voice of America broadcast about this proposal, Dec. 11, 2006 WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Model for Africa
US Trade Representative to Africa, Governor of Nigeria Central Bank weigh in at Wharton
Important Note: Many visitors from all over the political spectrum have read this release and believed it to mean that the WTO is officially in favor of slavery. In actual fact, we at the WTO would never, ever wish to suggest that the modern version of the West's free trade with Africa is tantamount to its older form, slavery, or even worse than its other older form, colonialism. That would fly in the face of everything that we stand for. The catastrophic failure of free-trade policies in Africa may be one partial source of this confusion. The actual, literal slavery that flourishes under the auspices of free trade (in Brazil, Jordan, and elsewhere) may be another.
Philadelphia - At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West. The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves.
"Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones.
The audience included Prof. Charles Soludo (Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria), Dr. Laurie Ann Agama (Director for African Affairs at the Office of the US Trade Representative), and other notables. Agama prefaced her remarks by thanking Scmidt for his macroscopic perspective, saying that the USTR view adds details to the WTO's general approach. Nigerian Central Bank Governor Soludo also acknowledged the WTO proposal, though he did not seem to appreciate it as much as did Agama.
A system in which corporations own workers is the only free-market solution to African poverty, Schmidt said. "Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits—out the door. Get sick, get fired. If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now."
To prove that human stewardry can work, Schmidt cited a proposal by a free-market think tank to save whales by selling them. "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," he explained. Similarly, the market in Third-World humans will "empower" caring First Worlders to help them, Schmidt said.
One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory.
There were no other questions from the audience that took issue with Schmidt's proposal.
During his talk, Schmidt outlined the three phases of Africa's 500-year history of free trade with the West: slavery, colonialism, and post-colonial markets. Each time, he noted, the trade has brought tremendous wealth to the West but catastrophe to Africa, with poverty steadily deepening and ever more millions of dead. "So far there's a pattern: Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. That's why we're so happy to announce this fourth phase for business between Africa and the West: good for business—GOOD for people."
The conference took place on Saturday, November 11. The panel on which Schmidt spoke was entitled "Trade in Africa: Enhancing Relationships to Improve Net Worth." Some of the other panels in the conference were entitled "Re-Branding Africa" and "Growing Africa's Appetite." Throughout the comments by Schmidt and his three co-panelists, which lasted 75 minutes, Schmidt's stewardee, Thomas Bongani-Nkemdilim, remained standing at respectful attention off to the side.
"This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything—even people."
US Trade Representative follows up on WTO comments as WTO assistant looks on Selling whales saves whales, and the same can be applied to poor Africans WTO and assistant fraternize with US Trade Representative to Africa WTO's Schmidt and colleague visit historic Philadelphia
CONTACT US : World Trade Organization, rue de Lausanne 154, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:43 am
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Fri Aug 08, 2008 10:46 am
Cactusflower, I imagine it is. The expectation is this: Each member of the WTO on entry accepts the principle of "single undertaking". this means that every member signs up to ALL of the WTO agreements with no alterations or amendments.
Under the GATS Art. XIX, each country stipulates a level of specific commitment for a particular service they are willing to "commit to liberalisation". This is a tricky exercise because once a level is committed, there is no going back. Specific commitment is part of progressive liberalisation. "Progressive" in this sense, as it is a legal text, does not allow for regressive at any stage into the future.
Under Article XI, we are allowed in Ireland to specify our level and type of domestic regulation for services. This means that outside providers must adhere to this level of regulation. However the regulations imposed on outside providers, under the "most favoured nation" principle, cannot be higher that that applied to domestic providers. And, critically, under Art VI. 4, they cannot be more burdensome than necessary to achieve the quality of service.
Under Article XIV, we can ring-fence health under the General Exemptions text. But that is the only public service that has this status. I very much doubt if Ireland has done that but I am having great difficulty finding what our specific commitments are under the schedule.
Basically, Harney can privatise the entire health service under GATS and there is nothing that can be done about it. The GATS makes it difficult, if a government has not used the full extent of the General Exemption clause in Art. XIV, to defend the health service against privatisation/"for-profit" commercialisation. She must love it.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: The WTO - WTF? Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:14 am
Basically, Harney can privatise the entire health service under GATS and there is nothing that can be done about it. The GATS makes it difficult, if a government has not used the full extent of the General Exemption clause in Art. XIV, to defend the health service against privatisation/"for-profit" commercialisation. She must love it.
Is this a decision that has already been made? When would it have been made and would it have been first brought to the Dail? I intend to get the information on this, so anything you could tell me that would help me frame my questions would be really useful.
Portal 
)
