The collapse late last month of world trade talks, known as the Doha Round (after the capital of Qatar), was overshadowed by continuing bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan and the outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. While the bloodletting there is unlikely to be the golden opportunity some think it is, the breakdown of the WTO talks could be -- if we seize it.Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Proudly delegitimizing the state since 2005
"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
The comments towards the end of the column about the US government's agenda of imposing US "intellectual property" definitions are illuminating.
ReplyDeleteWashington wants to impose a "shrink wrap" empire.
A couple of years back WIRED ran an excellent article here called THE EAGLE IS GROUNDED. Where the EU wants free trade but says it must insist on a range of labour, environmental and cultural standards, the US says it wants free trade but must insist on IP standards.
The new IP based protectionism will ultimately be as crippling and as unproductive as the history of merchant marine subsidies the WIRED article elucidates.