In The News

Fifty Dollar Oil

September 29, 2004
Forecast violence in the Niger Delta recently startled an already jumpy oil market. The double-punch of this insurgency and other negative news has brought the cost of oil in the United States close to US$50 per barrel, the highest price recorded to date. Why the extraordinary spike? Oil traders may be partially to blame. Opec nations, who import in foreign currency, may have difficulty...

The Price of Free Trade - Part I

Mustafizur Rahman September 29, 2004
Instituted some 30 years ago, the international Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) set export quotas on all textile manufacturing nations. Some poorer countries, like Bangladesh and Cambodia, received larger quotas, which enabled them to attract foreign investment and sharply boost their earnings. Artificially protected from competition, they built their developing economies around the textiles...

Looms of Doom

Sutapa Mukerjee September 22, 2004
The collapse of the specialized silk industry in parts of India results from years of mismanaged industry policies and an influx of Chinese silk - a cheaper, more durable alternative. Five years ago, the Indian government allowed the free import of Chinese crepe silks, reversing a protectionist ban that had only served to produce a demand for smuggled Chinese goods. The new policy has seen a...

Uncertain Future for Free Trade

Ernesto Zedillo September 15, 2004
WTO members in Geneva recently ratified the Doha Development Agenda July 2004 Package, a group of measures designed to carry out the goals of the 2001 Doha Round. Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and former president of Mexico, suggests that despite laudatory talk from the key negotiators, the recent Geneva agreement contributes little toward advancing...

US to Rejoin Coffee Pact

September 15, 2004
Poverty-stricken coffee farmers in developing countries are struggling with their inability to compete with in the global marketplace. The London-based International Coffee Organization (ICO), an intergovernmental cooperative, has worked to improve conditions for those involved in the coffee trade. The United States, protesting ICO's price controls, pulled out of the collective in the...

Is Equity in Trade an Attainable Goal?

Susan Ariel Aaronson September 15, 2004
As developing countries struggle to survive in the competitive global market, many wonder if the current system is inherently biased against them. Groups like Oxfam International, a prominent development organization, aim to remedy what they regard as structural failures in the world economy by reforming trade relations among nations. Globalization scholar Susan Ariel Aaronson suggests that...

The Great Reverse – Part III

Anna Greenspan September 8, 2004
While headlines in the West bemoan job outsourcing to China and India, they ignore a far more profound economic shift: the growth of business partnerships between these two rising economies. In the final installment of our three-part series, "The Great Reverse," globalization scholar Anna Greenspan writes that leaders and entrepreneurs in both Asian countries are bridging political...