Humanity freezes in trade winds after Doha failure · 11 August 2008
(A great article by Hugh Evans in today’s Herald Sun):
THE inspiring display of human harmony at the Beijing opening ceremony was a welcome fillip after the less than dignified breakdown in global co-operation recently.
Among those with more time than they would like to watch young Australian athletes competing at the Games will be the young Australians who had jobs at Starbucks.
Surprisingly enough, the closure of most Starbucks stores in Australia had more to do with global trade’s problems than the quality of the coffee.
It was proof as clear as the high-definition pictures from Beijing of how economically interconnected our world has become.
A decline in coffee production in Vietnam and Brazil, along with the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, combined with other factors to throw hundreds of young people out of work.
There are some who will point at the Starbucks failure as an example of the failure of globalisation, as if globalistion is some sort of ideology that we can choose to adopt or reject.
In fact, globalisation is a tide of history we could not turn back, even if we tried.
The challenge for us is to set in place the rules to ensure that the benefits of this globalised economy are shared as far and wide as possible.
That’s why the recent failure of the Doha round of trade talks really was such a significant setback.
For all its faults, the World Trade Organisation is designed to impose rules that promote free trade and minimise its abuses.
It is sometimes said an effective political argument is one that takes a few words to construct, but hundreds to tear down.
It’s also said that a contest between a simple lie and the complicated truth is not a fair one.
Nowhere is this more obvious than with global trade.
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