Desperate to clinch a new global trade deal, World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy is planning to convene a "mini-ministerial" meeting in the third week of July. The aim of the meeting is to come up with agreements to liberalize trade in agriculture, industry, and services. These sectors have been the focus of the so-called Doha Round of WTO negotiations that have dragged on since 2001.
This essay originally appeared in TomDispatch, a website run by Tom Engelhardt and associated with The Nation magazine.
Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.
With elections in Russia fast approaching, relations with the West are deteriorating drastically. Three recent events highlight this downward trend. The most dramatic has been the failure of the United States and Russia to compromise on anti-missile defense (AMD). Reflecting months-long tensions, the latest round of talks in Maine between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin ended with U.S. insistence on setting up a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, I opened up The Washington Post and stared right into the flinty mind of one Robert B. Zoellick, the Bush administration’s pick for new World Bank president.
FPIF asked Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and Gawain Kripke of Oxfam whether international trade is good for agriculture or not. In her essay, Mittal argues that free trade is hazardous to farmers and farming. In his essay, Kripke sees a role for trade in sustainable development. While they agree on many points, here they also take issue with each other’s positions.
FPIF asked Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and Gawain Kripke of Oxfam the following questions:
FPIF asked Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and Gawain Kripke of Oxfam the following questions:
When it first became part of the English vocabulary in the early 1990s, globalization was supposed to be the wave of the future. Fifteen years ago, the writings of globalist thinkers such as Kenichi Ohmae and Robert Reich celebrated the advent of the emergence of the so-called borderless world. The process by which relatively autonomous national economies become functionally integrated into one global economy was touted as “irreversible. ” And the people who opposed globalization were disdainfully dismissed as modern day incarnations of the Luddites that destroyed machines during the Industrial Revolution.
During the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Hanoi in November, international media attention focused on the rapid economic changes in Vietnam. ÂSocialist Ideals are Fading as World’s Businesses Rush In, reads one subtitle. A young entrepreneur with a craving for Western luxury brands represents Âthe new face of Vietnam. And an American expatriate in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) reports that Âit’s all electric here.Â