What about the Third World?
Important issues for the Third World have been overlooked in the Uruguay round of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that concluded with the signing in December of an agreement among the member countries.
Africa remains vulnerable: Because food aid has been ruled out of the agreement, the danger is that exporters will compete for quantity instead of low international food prices. The outcome for other Third World countries may well be the same: exporters will compete with local peasants and the food problem may not be solved.
And, the signing of Blair House II virtually closes the European market to food imports. So there is much less hope for Third World exporters of food products.
Agricultural debate
The agricultural debates between the US and the EC were of particular concern to five exporting countries -- Argentina, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Australia and Canada. The group with the greatest influence was the Group of Cairns that unites countries from the South and the North.
The Third World countries did not stand united in the negotiations. Most Third World countries fought for specific products, for which they had to compete with the US or the subsidised prices of EC countries. For instance, EC's beef exports to Africa are at very low prices which compete with the produce of poor African peasants. In fact, so intense were protests by some farmers' organisations in west Africa that a French organisation, Agir Ici, started a political campaign against these exports. Similarly in 1992, the US sent 30,000 tonnes of sorghum to Burkina Faso as food aid, which arrived just before harvesting time in that country.
The objective of the negotiations when they began in 1986 was to usher in free trade. But this was later reduced to access to the international market for three products -- wheat, rice and oil-based products -- and to capture two markets -- Japan and the EC.
In fact, projecting GATT negotiations as a crusade for free trade probably allowed the US to garner some support against the EC. Only time will tell if agricultural exporters from Argentina, Hungary or South Africa will make any gains from the agreement.
But is free trade the best way of development? History tells us that a certain dose of protectionism can speed some industries up (for instance, the agricultural production in the EC has grown under the protection of CAP for 30 years).
The US has never expressed any hesitation in protecting any part of its industry. Experience shows regional cooperation are often more efficient: in Europe (with the EC or with the European Free Trade Association) and in east Asia (with the Chinese and Japanese nets spread in the whole region). And finally, why did the US enter into the North American Free Trade Agreement, a regional agreement, with its neighbours Canada and Mexico?
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