Monbiot: "I was Wrong about Trade"

George Monbiot’s latest article makes for interesting reading. The gist of the article is: “So let us campaign not to scrap the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it into a Fair Trade Organisation, whose purpose is to restrain the rich while emancipating the poor.”

My conversion came on the day I heard a speaker demand a cessation of most forms of international trade and then, in answering a question from the audience, condemn the economic sanctions on Iraq. If we can accept that preventing trade with Iraq, or, for that matter, imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, impoverishes and in many cases threatens the lives of the people of those nations, we must also accept that a global cessation of most kinds of trade would have the same effect, but on a greater scale. >>”link”:http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=588

Another article over at YaleGlobal: David Dollar, Director of Developmental Policy at the World Bank, cites findings from a recent survey to support the argument he has made in the past that globalization indeed helps reduce poverty and inequality.

WASHINGTON: A recent worldwide poll may have come as a shock to those who view the anti-globalization demonstrations as emblematic of a general souring mood about global economic integration. The Pew survey found that not only was the attitude generally positive but there was more enthusiasm for foreign trade and investment in developing countries than in rich ones. >>”link”:http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=1934

Updated at 10:13 AM on August 15, 2005 | Email