opinion
Once again, world trading arrangements are threatened by short-sighted U.S. politicians and special-interest groups.
After years of acrimonious debate, largely prolonged by U.S. attempts to make the world conform to its trade policies, last spring more than 100 nations signed a formal agreement to liberalize trade rules and create a new World Trade Organization to replace the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Last week, GATT chief Peter Sutherland warned that the historic world trade agreement would be endangered in major powers like the United States do not move promptly to ratify it. The agreement is to take effect next January, when the World Trade Organization will be created.
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Sutherland said delays would allow revival of policies “whose ruinous effect on prosperity and international stability is amply displayed in recent history.” U.S. politicians and special-interest groups, including business and labor lobbies, are campaigning for changes in the U.S. ratification legislation to serve their particular interests. In effect, they are demanding that they be allowed to unilaterally change a treaty that was painfully crafted and pieced together by a hundred nations over several years.
That immature, self-centred approach could, if successful, lead to collapse of the whole agreement as other nations retaliated with their own selfish modifications.
But U.S. trouble-making does not stop there.
China, with its immense population and potentially huge role in global trade, has until now been excluded from GATT. The Chinese government is now willing and eager to join GATT and thus become a founding member of the new World Trade Organization.
Bringing China into the world trade club could have many long-term benefits, including enabling it to earn the massive amounts of foreign currency it will need to import food for its expanding population and avoid social unrest due to food shortages or excessively high food prices.
The United States, however, is effectively blocking China’s entry with complaints that China does not trade fairly in textiles, does not respect various U.S. copyrights, and does not have “transparent” enough pricing.
Even if the charges are valid, they are scarcely grounds to block a quarter of humanity from being part of the global trading system. Continuing that exclusion would be socially irresponsible and economically damaging to many nations, including Canada.
It’s time the members of the world trading community told the United States to grow up.
