It was easy to miss it, what with rockets slamming into hatch-backs in Haifa, but the Doha round of international trade talks has collapsed. From the Washington Post:
IN THE AFTERMATH of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States and its allies launched the Doha round of global trade talks. The aim was to reduce trade barriers that particularly harm developing countries, with the hope of spreading prosperity and dimming the appeal of terrorists who assert that the global system is unjust. Five years later, the struggle against Islamic radicalism is hardly going swimmingly. But the world's leaders are tired and complacent. On Monday they allowed the Doha round to collapse.
Free trade is like a sensible diet. Everyone knows its what one ought to do. But it hurts.
The main players lost no time in pointing fingers at each other. The truth is that both the United States and the European Union made political decisions not to confront their farm lobbies, even though agricultural liberalization is at the heart of the Doha round. European timidity owed something to the diminished status of Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, who is beset by poor poll ratings and a whiff of scandal, and much to the wimpy French government, which retreats from pro-market reform when bullied by demonstrators. Meanwhile, the Bush administration faces tough midterm elections and has no stomach for alienating farmers. The leading developing countries, for their part, offered only minimal market opening.
Economic development is no guarantee against militant ideologies and terrorism. The folks who fly airplanes into office buildings are generally middle class men who have benefited from development. But development is necessary to create classes in impoverished nations that will have a stake in world order. It is in the interest of the United States and the world that we continue opening markets.
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