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EPA, a veritable Hobson’s choice, Mr
Mandelson
By E. Ablorh-Odjidja,
Ghanadot
The Economic
Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU [European
Union] and Third World countries is to take effect
beginning 2008. With it, The EU hopes to create trade
reciprocity with developing nations.
Reciprocity is the word used, but in reality what is
happening is an arm twisting exercise against Third Word
countries in an attempt to offer them a choice that has
already been used under colonialism.
The rationale for this new trade arrangement is that it
would help end poverty in developing countries, while
allowing rich countries to benefit if they could sell
more of their goods and services in the developing
world.
But what can the Third World offer Europe other than the
agricultural products that the EU subsidizes her farmers
to produce cheaply?
Developed countries are wealthier because they are at
the high end of the world trade pole. Not only are they
massive producers of agricultural products like corn,
wheat and cotton, but they dominate the world of heavy
industry too. Receipts in trade dollar amounts heavily
favor their industries and manufacturing services and
assure their dominance in this field for decades to
come.
Stated bluntly, the two worlds are not on equal footing
in trade and as such it is impossible for true
reciprocity to take place between them without some
concessions that intensely favor the Third World first.
The EPA grants none.
One cannot trade bananas for tractors or life saving
pharmaceuticals for cocoa beans and claim you are on
equal footing with your trading partner, especially when
you don’t even get to set the price for your own
product.
But in the name of reciprocity, the EU is demanding that
Third World countries, mostly former European colonies,
sign this EPA agreement or perish by the end of January
2008.
As reported in
Ghanadot.com on Sept. 19, Mr Peter Mandelson,
the EU Trade Commissioner, “warned that there would be
no legal basis for the extension of existing
preferential trade terms between the EU and the 78
African, Caribbean and Pacific countries if the two
sides do not initial new Economic Partnership Agreements
(EPA) before the end of 2007.”
The threat in Mr. Mendelson statement was real; except
he failed to note why the developing nations were not
rushing to the table with pens ready.
By September 27, 2007, Mr. Mendelson was ready to repeat
his warning in an on-line BBC publication. He said
“former European colonies . . . could miss out if they
do not sign up to new trade deals” and that “those who
relied on exports of goods such as bananas and fish
faced a risk to their livelihoods.”
The cruel part of this statement was that the message
was directed at a constituency of exporters in the Third
World whom non-compliance with EPA agreement would hurt
most. The intent was to prod them to put political
pressure on their home governments, the very entities in
the Third World the EU was negotiating with, to force
them to sign the deal. Thus the unethical hand of the EU
was revealed in Mr. Mendelson's statement.
Since 2001, Third World governments have been demanding
for a trade agreement that lowered trade barriers to
agricultural exports from developing countries and which
also ended subsidies paid to farmers in rich countries,
some say to the tune of some $300 billion a year, in
exchange for a fair trade deal, but the effort to date
has been to no avail.
Ironically, the EU, through Mr. Mandelson, has revealed
more zeal in the recent efforts to force Third World
governments to sign the EPA deal than she is known to
have shown in her willingness to end farm subsidies to
rich European farmers; never mind the fact that ending
farm subsidies in Europe would boost agricultural
production faster in the Third World and help end
poverty sooner in places like Africa.
But the reason why the EU has taken this approach is
obvious; the EU has the most to gain in an EPA deal that
fosters competition with the fragile economies of the
Third World.
In the good old days of the colonies, there were no
barriers to the flow of trade to and from the
metropolises of Europe. There was market integration as
virtual part of the colonial regime, the inherent key of
which was a force that settled both developed and
developing markets on the “comparative advantage” stage.
In time, the “comparative advantage” meant each partner
produced goods in the field in which he excelled. Soon,
the colonized became the “hewers of wood and drawers of
water.”
This trade partnership called for under the EPA
agreement is the same as the one in the colonial
arrangement. For the current Third World, the choice is
one that good old Mr. Hobson in his horse stable could
not have improved.
Thus EU countries would flood Third World markets with
cheap products from their modern and efficient
industries and industries in the Third World, with aging
and antiquated machinery, would be forced to compete and
collapse. The result can only be detrimental to wealth
acquisitioning in Africa.
On the flip side, in the EU markets, very little will be
gained by Third world goods; bearing in mind that most
of the agricultural products from the Third World would
be undercut by European subsidies to her farmers. Thus
the benefits, if any under the EPA arrangement, would
already have been gutted!
But such is the world when one refuses to learn. The EPA
concept is the same trade arrangement as was during
colonial times. The colonial dependency, disturbed by
the granting of independence, is about to be reinstalled
under the guise of a different name.
If only Africa could have a common market, it could then
say to Mr. Mandelson that any restriction or imposition
of tariff on her products by Europe, in the absence of
the EPA signing, would be met with the same on theirs.
Then Africa can go ahead and open her markets to India,
China, Japan, America and others who decide to play
fair.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publsiher
www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, September 30, 2007
/Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or
reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a
website, email a copy of the web page to
publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 1 October 2007
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