No WTO agreement in Hong Kong...? No problem...
it's always nice to get another perspective...
in so many ways, argentina is a fascinating case study of the developing world in microcosm... in addition to argentina, i've watched in several countries as the precise dynamic described above plays out... i make it a point to read the fine print on every product i pick up in the store... a large percentage of them, regardless of how unfamiliar the brand name of the product itself might be to me, when i get to the fine print on the back of the package, i see very familiar names - proctor and gamble, unilever, general electric, colgate, gillette, etc... Submit To Propeller
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"We do not at all believe that it would be a failure to conclude the meeting without an agreement," activist Jorge Carpio, of the Argentine organisation Foco (Focus), told IPS. Foco organised debates on poverty and free trade, in which activists from all around the world took part, parallel to the Fourth Summit of the Americas held in Mar del Plata, Argentina in November.
[...]
"It doesn't matter how long the WTO negotiations take. On the contrary: we need time to recover from the devastation caused by the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s. If no agreement is reached, we will have some breathing room in which to recover, re-establish alliances between countries of the South, and prepare to bargain from a better position," explained Carpio.
[...]
Carpio said that although the issue of trade might appear to be unconnected with the problems of people who are poor and unemployed, it is not. The participating activists "recognised that the explosion in unemployment in Argentina took place in the 1990s, when trade was liberalised to a record-breaking extent," he noted.
In Argentina, the free-market reforms of the 1990s last decade resulted in a catastrophic political, social and economic collapse which brought the government down in 2001 and left a deep-rooted social crisis in its wake. Poverty reached 54 percent of the population and unemployment soared above 20 percent.
"If there are no trade barriers in our countries, our factories cannot compete with products imported from developed countries, and people link that immediately to their own experience and living conditions," Carpio said. But the process of understanding these connections takes time, he added.
in so many ways, argentina is a fascinating case study of the developing world in microcosm... in addition to argentina, i've watched in several countries as the precise dynamic described above plays out... i make it a point to read the fine print on every product i pick up in the store... a large percentage of them, regardless of how unfamiliar the brand name of the product itself might be to me, when i get to the fine print on the back of the package, i see very familiar names - proctor and gamble, unilever, general electric, colgate, gillette, etc... Submit To Propeller
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posted by profmarcus at
12/17/2005
