"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> For those of you who did not see it last night, PBS had a program
> on P.O.V. titled "Life and Debt" about the havoc being caused in
> Jamaica by "globalization" and "free trade".
>
> When I first started watching it I thought to myself --
> "oh here we go, yet another green agenda program" but
> as time went by, I found myself re-thinking the issues.
>
> What became apparent from the program is how a system seems
> to have come into existence that is really set up to screw
> the third world countries.
It does seem that way, especially if you base your opinions only on the
arguments of one side.
>
> What happens is a country comes to the IMF for a loan. The
> IMF says ok, but the conditions are that you have to lower
> any barriers to imports (because free trade is a good thing).
> The country says ok. So what happens is in comes a flood
> of foreign goods, esp. U.S. food, produced by corporate
> agri-business. These come in at prices lower than foods
> can be produced domestically and as a result the Jamaican
> farmers are driven out of business. At first I found myself
> thinking -- "So what? The consumers are getting the benefits
> of lower food prices." -- but then I realized the problem --
> the U.S. exports are being produced with very large government
> subsidies.
US farm subsidies are actually quite low at the moment, only a few
billion for a multi-hundred billion dollar industry. They don't
subsidize low prices either, they are used to prop up prices. If we
ended subsidies entirely, US food prices would be far lower.
>
> If that wasn't bad enough, the IMF loans to Jamaica are at
> outrageous rates (19% was quoted) and there are clauses
> in the contracts that Jamaica cannot loan the money out
> at a lower rate to its farmers (so they could in theory
> modernize their farms with machinery to compete effectively
> against American imports). So the system is setup to *keep*
> a 3rd world country in that position.
Yes, this does seem inequitable, unless of course you consider the
record of third world countries in defaulting on loans, late in
payments, etc. Extending credit to such countries is like giving a
platinum card to a recovering shopaholic who lives on welfare: i.e. a
really really dumb idea.
>
> Then to top it all off, Jamaica had a preferential relationship
> with Britian with regard to the marketing of its banana crop.
> Apparently corporate banana growers who have large farms in
> Latin/South America got President Clinton to challenge this
> under the WTO rules and they won the case, so Britian had
> to open up the market (perhaps some slight benefit for
> British consumers, terrible for Jamaican banana planation
> workers and owners who see demand fall). This change
> doesn't benefit any U.S. farmers, only the corporations
> who own the offshore plantations.
Sure, but I don't seen anyone suing Jamaica in the WTO over the
marijuana crop, which is far higher in value than the banana crop. Keep
in mind also that native jamaicans don't own the banana plantations in
Jamaica either, they are owned by Brits.
>
> Now, I'm sure there are other sides to the story but it sure
> made me wonder if the corporate Agribusiness interests
> weren't influencing the IMF (and other bank) policies
> sufficiently to slant the playing field in their direction.
Frankly, nothing the IMF does surprises me. They seem to function with
an economic rule book that is far different from that used by anyone
else and is strictly written to benefit one group only: international
bankers. For instance, the US 1.35 trillion buck tax break, which will
actually cost us about 1.8 trillion due to synergistic effects, the IMF
projects is actually gonna cost us something like $3 trillion. Just how
they calculate that they do not say.
>
> For sure in my mind I don't think the IMF or the President
> should be demanding that third world countries eliminate import tariffs
> or that preferential trade relationships must be ended while the U.S.
> and Europe are subsidizing agriculture to the degree that they do.
Certainly not europe, but the US really doesn't subsidize anywhere near
the level they do, and where we do, it is to prop prices up, not keep
them down.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:12 MDT