Double bind for poor countries in trade talks

 Kuthula Matshazi

POOR nations are in a double bind as far as trade talks are concerned. If they object to unfavourable conditions that the western and rich countries propose, they are criticised.  When they agree to those flawed and destructive conditions their people suffer even worse. The Doha round trade talks are supposed to be finalised at next week’s meeting in Geneva and due for implementation at the beginning of January 2005.
At the Cancun talks in Mexico last year, the developing countries under the G20 grouping rejected offers that the rich world had offered them. They were making unreasonable demands like unfettered access to the developing world’s markets without guaranteeing the same as well as attempting to dominate developing countries’ business at the expense of those countries’ local industries.
The current issue of the Economist newspaper says of the commitment of the rich countries to the trade talks, “America would be too distracted by its presidential election and the European Union too preoccupied with its new members to bother with tricky negotiations whose main purpose was to help the world’s poor”.
Further castigating the poor world and pre-empting blame on them in the event trade ministers’ talks in Geneva fail to get an agreement by July 31, the paper says, “In fact, the elephants of world trade have shown a remarkable dedication to the Doha round over the past ten months. It’s the minnows – the world’s poorest – that have been threatening to kill any deal”.
These are racist and unfair comments. The Economist declaration is premised on two widely held views that poor and developing nations’ plight is of their own making and that their political leaders do not care about the plight of their people. That is not true.
This is done to serve three purposes. First, it is a strategy by capitalists to force the poor to unconditionally open their markets. Secondly, it is an attempt to win international public opinion leading to the trade negotiations.
Thirdly, it is intended to point a finger at the poor countries and enable the rich countries to shift blame when the latter most likely brings unreasonable demands again.
Trade has always been steeply tilted in favour of rich countries. A cow in Europe has a higher subsidy than an average African farmer. Western countries’ farmers get about US$300 billion per year in farm subsidies. So even if they glut the market with their produce and crush prices, they still manage to operate profitably because of the subsidies at the expense of farmers from poor countries.
Instead of considering us as peers and affording us the opportunity to be competitive by removing subsidies, which the World Trade Organisation has declared illegal, the world’s rich countries are closing their markets and insisting on giving us aid. No we don’t want aid but trade.
The reason they feel we need aid is racist. They perceive us as useless people who cannot do anything for ourselves but depend on them.
They want to perpetuate that dependency syndrome that they first established through their imperialist and colonialist activities. Newspapers like the Economist are helping these rich countries – in any case they are their own – to perpetuate that pursuit.
The Economist further says, “The EU has given up on ambitions to expand the Doha agenda to new areas, such as investment. It now wants new negotiations only on rules for trade facilitation, simplifying paperwork and reducing corruption. No one, except perhaps the politicians who benefit from corruption, should object to that”.
Again, this is very racist and distasteful. We all know that the European Union is very corrupt and right from Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi to Austrian members of parliament. The implication here is that the corrupt poor countries are likely to refuse the deal in spite of great efforts by the EU to address their concerns.
This is so because apparently, the EU has built some anti-corruption measures into the deal, hence the poor countries’ leaders who are corrupt, so reasons the Economist, are likely to refuse that deal. In other words, the poor countries are poor because they are their own victims. They are refusing to be helped by the rich countries.
Poor countries do not want to be helped by the rich countries but they want to trade with them as equals. We have the ability to extricate ourselves from the exploitations that these rich countries have continuously perpetrated on us. Instead of trying to perpetuate that trend, these rich countries and papers like the Economist must take stock of their own failings and ask themselves why these poor people do not want to be helped.
While the framework for a global trade deal certainly exists as the Economist rightly says so, the problem is that it is being done at the expense of poor countries. Why does, for instance the paper not detail the problems the poor countries are facing in the talks or what they are prepared to compromise in order for a deal to be reached? Instead it says the demands of the “smaller countries are disparate and often hard to pin down”.
This is pure racism. We are portrayed as people who jump and shout making noise but not knowing exactly what we want. The paper wants to paint a picture of a confused group which has diverse and unco-ordinated issues. It is not confusion when different issues are raised. We are different countries and have different needs.
If the United States for example is concerned with the EU trademark system while France is pushing for its continued agriculture subsidies, that’s not confusion. Those are clear and priority areas for these two countries. To say that because two countries have different needs is confusion is nonsensical.
It is quite sad and unfortunate to see the world discourse premised on the idea that developing countries should accept what is on the table because they are the ones who are in need most. It is also sad for the western media and the Economist in particular to base their lobbying on racist insinuations to try and win their negotiations before the rich countries unveil their packages. It is only through mutually acceptable conditions that the developing countries will accept any deal not through finger breaking.