Perhaps the riots in Seattle marked a turning point for
a globalising world. In the past 50 years cross-border trade and
investment have boomed, raising living standards across the world and
lifting millions out of poverty. But now a backlash against this closer
integration has begun. This backlash is surprising. By and large, it
comes not from developing countries which were battered when world
financial markets seized up in 1997-98, but from rich countries which
escaped largely unscathed. It is strongest in the US, the biggest
beneficiary of free trade, luxuriating in an economic boom. And its
main target is not multinational companies or global banks, but a once
obscure regulator with 500 staff and an annual budget of £48m: the
World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Trade
The human face of globalisation
The New Zealand that Mike Moore grew up in was an
insular place. “Even the humble spud was opposed by the merchants and
church in its day. A church leader railed against the potato as being a
dangerous narcotic, almost as bad as tea. The merchants and farmers
wanted to protect their profits… against this dangerous, competitive
new crop,” he writes in his latest book, “A Brief History of the
Future”. If New Zealand turned its back on the world, the world ignored
New Zealand. Ideas did not flow into or out of it. It produced wool,
not world leaders. Mr Moore, who takes over at the World Trade
Organisation on September 1st, has changed that.
Objection
On a recent trip to Tokyo, Charlene Barshefsky, America’s trade representative, gave her hosts a wigging. She demanded concessions, threatening sanctions if Japan did not reflate, deregulate and curb steel exports. The Japanese shrugged. They have come to expect fighting talk from the woman they call “Dragon Lady”.