Around the World Trade Organization for a Few Days
I'm a bit struck by the protesters at the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong. They are mostly farmers from S. Korea protesting the WTO and the U.S. when it is the goal of the conference to finish the Doha Round of trade concessions aimed mostly at ending farm subsidies. Hmm and I wonder which countries have the largest farm subsidy programs? That's right, the same ones the farmers are protesting against. Hey idiots, if you don't like cheap Iowa corn, then you probably should support the trade talks (of course then you'll get cheap Malaysian corn instead).
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 10:38 PM
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In other trade news, it looks like lawyers with coke habits will be getting an extra bonus soon - www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/international/americas/19bolivia.html
Seriously, the headlines on the stories about the Bolivian election in this country are BS. Bolivia elects its first indigenous president ever and all the headlines focus on coca.
Actually the South Korean farmers are protesting because they want to keep their own subsidies. South Korea is about as 1st World as it gets when it comes to the protectionism of its small farmers. They're especially scared of the WTO forcing South Korea to drop tariffs on imports of things like Chinese fruit and...California rice.
Of course they don't mind when the trade barriers are dropped for the ubiquitous Samsung and LG phones that Cingular is pawning off on everyone.
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