Nothing New to Report

In developing countries, 70 percent of the population depends either directly or indirectly on agriculture. This collides with the refusal of the U.S. to stop subsidizing, for example, about 25,000 wealthy cotton growers. To speak of development within the context of global trade negotiations without the U.S. willing to stop sponsoring a small and privileged group of farmers is to run around in circles like a dog chasing its tail.

Joseph Stiglitz says this means that hundreds of thousands of poor cotton growers from sub-Saharan Africa and India, for example, are left out of the development game because there are cheaper cotton prices in the market thanks to the “generosity” of the U.S. toward a small preferred group. It also means that the American government does not care that the World Trade Organization issued a resolution regarding the illegality of cotton subsidies.

For this reason, it is shocking that the WTO continues with the nonsense of having another Doha Round for the development of global trade negotiations; the last 12 years have clearly shown how unnecessary and costly these meetings are. This round aims to negotiate two huge regional agreements, one trans-Atlantic and the other trans-Pacific. Doesn’t the position held by the U.S. show that negotiations between the U.S. and Europe or the U.S. and Pacific countries, not including China, do not speak of free trade, but of an engineered trade policy? There is nothing new to report on this front.

In my country we say, “Whoever has more saliva always drinks more pinol, [a type of corn-based drink].” This means that we cannot be naive: In these contexts, those with the most power direct the negotiations to their advantage. The problem lies there — on that uneven table where the players with a disproportionate ability to make decisions and take action sit. This reminds me of what was happening between 1950 and 1960 with the famous “aid for development,” which was given in the name of democracy. It also reminds me of the subsidies that successive Guatemalan governments have historically given to economically powerful agricultural sectors, which have developed with precision the art of crying, since “whoever doesn’t cry doesn’t get nursed [from the government’s breast].” In most cases, this has been to the detriment of small- and medium-sized farmers.

A real democracy asks for symmetrical or balanced trade agreements. The U.S. cannot ask Japan, for example, to eliminate subsidies to its rice production if it does not do it first itself. Real development asks for clear financial rules and property systems and for the interests of nations to be placed above commercial and corporate interests. This should take place within a transparent, environmentally responsible, authentic trade and social-welfare-friendly framework. Let me dream.