A depression of trade ministers

Published 07 December 2007

How climate change is being used as an opportunity to seek competitive advantage...

Trade ministers are flying in for a two-day meeting starting tomorrow. Woohoo! Can’t wait. There’s nothing quite like a depression (collective noun) of trade ministers in town to truly put a downer on your day.

Anyway, why, might you ask, are trade ministers coming to Bali for a meeting at the same time as a UN climate conference? What is it they want? Very good questions, I would respond. Let me explain…

You may already be aware that the “urgent need to tackle climate change” is being used to promote a stunning range of crap ideas and dodgy technologies. Well, I think the trade folks were perhaps feeling a bit behind the curve and wanted to do some catching up, so here’s the back story…

A few weeks ago the Indonesian government sends a letter to trade ministers inviting them to Bali to discuss the interaction between trade rules and climate change. It is far from clear why the Indonesian government took this initiative (possibly a prestige thing, possibly related to its desire for biofuel market access) but the trade ministers have duly responded and are on their way here.

Some (i.e. the EU & US) are keen to open the markets of others (i.e. big developing countries) for their high tech products and their service multinationals (e.g. water companies). Others (eg Brazil, maybe Indonesia) are keen to open the markets of some (i.e. the US & EU) for their biofuels. Nobody likes each other's proposals but everyone is using the ‘urgent need to tackle climate change’ as their justification.

So, what to conclude from this? Everyone is using climate change to seek competitive advantage. What a surprise.

Clearly the trade ministers are not going to agree on all this stuff in a couple of days in Bali, so what’s the likely outcome? Well, there is one thing that all trade ministers can agree to, at least rhetorically. It’s this: pursuing open markets and ‘free trade’, they like to claim, is consistent with pretty much any other policy objective you care to mention (except warmongering) and other policy objectives should not be used as an ‘excuse’ to create ‘unjustified’ barriers to trade and that WTO rules rule supreme. Actually, that’s three things.

Anyway, I predict, that the outcome will be what on the face of it seems like a bland statement. Something along the lines of how climate change and free trade/open markets are ‘mutually supportive’ and that countries should seek all ways possible (perhaps even using the word ‘expeditiously’ - which trade negotiators are very fond of) to enhance the clearly complementary objectives of open markets and tackling climate change by considering, as appropriate, opening some markets, and possibly that negotiations on climate change should not be used to create barriers to trade.

In fact, I would put money on something like this coming out as an agreed statement. Not a lot of money you understand, due to past experience with betting leading me to be cautious, but I reckon the odds are pretty good.

The subtext of all this is, of course, about sending a strong signal to the assembled environment negotiators - not a trustworthy lot, prone to agreeing far reaching progressive policies that encroach on other people’s patch. And, make no mistake, nobody screws with the WTO.

Like I said, nothing quite like the trade people to put a downer on things.

All I can say (in reference to a previous post) is that this is definitely one case where the costs of the carbon emitted from the flying (business-class, rather than cattle-class, of course), and the hot air emitted after they arrive, definitely outweighs the benefits.

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1 comment from readers

gnuneo
08 December 2007 at 19:58

it is to be noted that those companies run as actual capitalist partnerships (aka cooperatives), are in general far more concerned with the general environment than those run by corporate boards - because the workers/owners have to live in the communities they are despoiling.

were a large proportion of the Earth's companies to be these entities, then 'free trade' would start to make sense. As it stands now however, any trade minister or corporatist who repeats the mantra 'free trade' is actually calling for its exact opposite - a highly regulated and controlled international structure, a global cartel that has more actual control over the prices and production than the politbureau did in soviet russia - and with concomitant worse consequences for the living conditions for the majority of people living under it, those in the 3rd world, about whom we hear as little as the russians did about the ukrainian holocaust under stalin.

as long as our economic structures are dominated by these feudal relics, as long as we beleive that unlike political power economic power can and should still be passed along the genetic lineage, then 'free trade' will be a chimera, a mirror opposite of anything claimed for it.

adam smith knew this well.

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About the writer

Peter Hardstaff is the World Development Movement's head of policy. Prior to joining WDM in April 2002, Peter spent three years leading research and advocacy work on international trade policy issues at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.