Grex Agora46 Conference

Item 223: WTO negotiations - Your take??

Entered by sj2 on Sun Sep 14 06:39:52 2003:

CNN reports: WTO reports progress at talks
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/09/13/trade.wto.ap/index.html

BBC reports: Trade summit faces crucial day
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3106764.stm

The Times of India reports: WTO draft document one-sided: India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow?
msid=181093

NYTimes doesn't feature the story anywhere on the front page, it 
seems. Not even in the Business or the International section.

While CNN seems to paint a story that all's well at Cancun, the BBC 
puts up a cautious note and Times of India reports a deadlock. 
Interesting!!
18 responses total.

#1 of 18 by scott on Sun Sep 14 12:50:50 2003:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wto/article/0,2763,1041883,00.html

"A high level source in the UK delegation told The Observer said: 'It's
difficult to know what the Americans want. They're staying in their hotel.
They're behaving like the Soviet Union in the Eighties. It's making it
difficult to know what they want.'"


#2 of 18 by sj2 on Mon Sep 15 06:16:16 2003:

Do the Americans know what they want?? ;)


#3 of 18 by tod on Mon Sep 15 06:26:59 2003:

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#4 of 18 by jaklumen on Mon Sep 15 07:27:11 2003:

Maybe.  I think I'd rather have Thalia, actually.  Aggresando!


#5 of 18 by tsty on Tue Sep 16 05:27:35 2003:

screeching does nnot behoove the have-nots.


#6 of 18 by janc on Tue Sep 16 15:58:16 2003:

The general Bush strategy on these things is to avoid having anything to do
with big multilateral international organizations, and do one-on-one deals
instead.  So the US isn't giving much in these big negotiations, and doesn't
care much if they fail.  Bush'd rather negotiate with one nation at a time.
If the US negotiates a free trade agreement with one country, say Morocco,
then it can swing its weight around a lot more than in a global negotiation.
Same reason big companies wish that unions didn't exist - they could probably
pay lower pages if their workers weren't negotiating collectively.

I think you can expect to see Bush continue to torpedo all these kinds of
international accords until the day comes when the American voters can torpedo
him.  Meanwhile, they'll do their best to spin the "everything is peachy"
story for the American voters, and the US media, which to a large degree
collects its news from administration sources, will tend to follow that lead.


#7 of 18 by clees on Wed Sep 17 19:34:22 2003:

According to Dutch media, the Cancun negatiations were a humungous 
faillure. Torpedoed by the 3rd World Countries who are fed up with the 
Western arrogance. 
Anti-globalists celebrated this faillure.


#8 of 18 by cross on Wed Sep 17 20:34:59 2003:

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#9 of 18 by tod on Wed Sep 17 21:22:42 2003:

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#10 of 18 by sj2 on Thu Sep 18 00:58:02 2003:

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#11 of 18 by sj2 on Thu Sep 18 00:58:43 2003:

Seems like US Government <==> Large MNCs. No? ;-)



#12 of 18 by tsty on Thu Sep 18 04:53:13 2003:

no, sj2, teh reverse.
  
i am stunned to see janc recognize teh success (in para#1) of the
stragery of individualism.
  
and then blow it al to hell in para#2 .. well, tehre is hope afterall.


#13 of 18 by remmers on Thu Sep 18 10:03:37 2003:

I wouldn't characterize it as "success".


#14 of 18 by cross on Thu Sep 18 23:40:50 2003:

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#15 of 18 by bru on Fri Sep 19 03:20:46 2003:

thats all right, a lot of americans make the same mistake.


#16 of 18 by flem on Fri Sep 19 14:19:03 2003:

Yes, and a lot of people vote for those americans.


#17 of 18 by gull on Fri Sep 19 14:41:54 2003:

Re #14: Lumping together America and large corporations is wrong. 
However, lumping together the U.S. government and large corporations is
pretty much dead-on, when you consider how politics works these days.


#18 of 18 by cross on Fri Sep 19 18:35:57 2003:

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