In The News

Wholesalers’ Hub to Overhaul Image

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn November 9, 2005
When Chinese corporations made moves earlier this year to buy up American companies, critics in the U.S. prophesized the imminent end of Western dominance under the weight of a rising China. While such descriptions of China as a global superpower seem premature, the Asian giant already reigns supreme in its own backyard. The revamping of Pratunam Centre, Thailand’s largest wholesale center, is a...

In Vino Vilitas

Barbara Supp November 9, 2005
Once the rarefied realm of connoisseurs, the wine industry now must bend to the forces of the market and not the tastes of the palate. Europe, the birthplace of wine, can no longer rely on its continental sophistication and experience to control the wine market. Experts estimate that 2005 will be the first year in which wine imports into Europe will outnumber wine exports. Fearing the loss of...

Globalization Rocks, but African Leaders Fail to Understand It

Franklin Cudjoe November 8, 2005
African leaders often describe globalization as an exploitative force keeping Africans in poverty. But in fact, it is the inept and corrupt governments of African countries which are robbing their citizens of the economic freedom to compete in the world market. Many leaders subvert their countries’ constitutions entirely in order to retain power and continue to feather their own nests with...

The Final Outcome of Summit: Two Americas

Andres Oppenheimer November 6, 2005
The fourth Summit of the Americas has fractured the hemisphere into two blocs—one consisting of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Uruguay; the other consisting of most of the rest of the Americas—that could not even agree on a joint post-summit press conference. They certainly do not agree on the fundamental issue behind the split: free trade. There is hope for agreement in the...

The Rising Risk of a Hard Landing

Stephen Roach November 4, 2005
In 2005, America’s deficit will account for 70 per cent of the total deficit positions in the global economy, By contrast, it will take ten countries to account for 70 percent of the global surplus. While Washington wants to shift the blame, this disequilibrium is largely the result of a US economy short on savings, writes Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. And because of the...

Why the Americas Have Drifted Apart

Howard LaFranchi November 3, 2005
When the Summit of the Americas first met, in 1994, it celebrated the spread of democracy in the Western Hemisphere and resolved to create a pan-American free trade zone by 2005. There will be no free trade pact and little celebration, however, when President Bush attends the fourth Summit of the Americas this week. Washington's vision for Latin America is in trouble, hurt by disagreements...

The Doha Round and Globalization’s Missing Middle

Barry Desker November 2, 2005
The Doha Round meeting of the WTO is still weeks away but observers are already writing its epitaph. A former senior trade official of Singapore envisages an unsatisfactory conclusion to the trade negotiations in Hong Kong this December, mainly because of its likely failure to reach agreements on agricultural and services liberalization. But there may not be any clear cut “villain” responsible...