In The News

In Search of a Grand Vision for World Trade

Ernesto Zedillo September 10, 2003
Agricultural subsidies are expected to be the main stumbling block at this week's WTO meeting in Cancun. As developing countries try to stop the agricultural policies that former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo calls nothing less than disguised "dumping", developed countries – notably the US and the EU – continue to offer only mildly progressive reforms. On the other hand,...

Agriculture on the Table at Trade Talks in Mexico

Kevin Sullivan September 10, 2003
Protesters gathered yesterday around the heavily guarded convention center in Cancun where the latest WTO meeting is taking place. The agricultural subsidies of developed countries is at the top of many representatives' agenda. Negotiators from Mexico to Australia are arguing that the US and the European Union's agricultural subsidies hurt their farmers by 'artificially'...

The Myth of Localism

George Monbiot September 9, 2003
Some delegates at the world trade talks claim to defend the interests of the poor but actually promote policies that are detrimental to developing countries, says British environmentalist and author George Monbiot in The Guardian. A proposal of particular danger, Monbiot argues, is localization, which advocates that everything that can be produced locally should be produced locally. Proponents...

Protests Greet Yet Another WTO Meeting

Pranab Bardhan September 8, 2003
As the World Trade Organization prepares to meet in Cancun, Mexico, backers and detractors of globalization are clashing again, with each side claiming to represent the interests of the world's poor. Those opposed to globalization in its current form point to an increase in inequality and poverty in countries that have opened up to international capital and corporations, while supporters...

Rich Will Pay If WTO Lets Poor Down

James Wolfensohn September 7, 2003
In advance of this week's WTO meeting in Cancun, World Bank President James Wolfensohn writes that the current Doha round of trade talks offers a real opportunity to improve the lot of developing nations. For this to happen, though, he says that both rich and poor countries have to understand what it means to give and take. "Rich countries must show leadership by reducing protection...

Is Islam Compatible with Democracy and Modernity?

Asghar Ali Engineer September 4, 2003
Claims that Islam is incompatible with democracy and modernity are terribly off-base, says Asghar Ali Engineer, a scholar and author at the Institute of Islamic Studies in Mumbai. The observation that science and democracy are not found in contemporary Islamic countries is fair, he says, but the root causes lie in historical, economic, and political circumstances – not in Islam. Authoritarian...

How Washington Can be a Hyper-Power and a Hyper-Borrower

Philip Segal September 2, 2003
What kind of a superpower gets into so much debt that it has trouble pushing around countries that it would love to? The American kind, says Philip Segal, Markets and Finance Editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal. China and Japan - two major buyers of US government bonds - could do great damage to the American economy if they decided to stop buying or to suddenly sell their share of the US...