The Rushford Report Archives

U.S.-Thailand FTA?

Globaphobics do Cancun

“Licensed to Kill, Inc.”

October, 2003: Players Who’s Up To What

By Greg Rushford

Published in the Rushford Report


U.S.-Thailand FTA?

 

            With the collapse of the WTO’s ministerial meetings in Cancun and the Doha Round dormant, the top U.S. trade priority now is to assemble an economic coalition of the willing by cutting preferential trade deals with favored allies. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is currently negotiating preferential accords with 14 countries. Thailand could soon become the 15th.

            Even for those of us who greatly lament the inevitable political and economic consequences of the trade-distorting world of preferential “Free Trade Agreements,” a U.S.-Thai deal has some attraction. This is because Thailand is one ASEAN country that seems genuinely interested in expanding trade. Other Southeast Asian countries are laggards. Malaysia remains a negative drag in any free-trade forum. The Philippines has been resisting calls to lower tariffs and dismantle other trade barriers that keep that country so poor. Some Philippine politicians have actually advocated leaving the WTO. Indonesia , alas, is also presently in the tank. Vietnam looks to be the only regional player apart from Thailand that looks set for serious economic growth.

            There are interesting arguments for a U.S.-Thai trade bilateral.

            Thailand presumably would have to do more to open its banking and insurance markets, and crack down on the theft of intellectual property. While politically difficult, some forward movement should be possible (and definitely would be in Thailand ’s own interests). The more interesting — and probably more difficult — politics involves products that are politically sensitive for the United States .

            Ford Motor wants to export light trucks from Thailand to America . Will the U.S. drop its infamous 25 percent tariff on foreign trucks? What a fine idea. There is absolutely no economic justification whatsoever for the U.S. truck tax. Think of how this would pressure Malaysia , which would have to reconsider its crippling domestic content rules aimed at protecting its uncompetitive Proton auto. But what would the United Autoworkers of America have to say about this, particularly in an election year?

            And what about agriculture? Would the Bush administration give Thailand the same duty-free treatment on tuna packaged in pouches that it has given Ecuador ? If so, what about other tuna countries like the Philippines ? What about opening U.S. sugar markets? What about rice?

            And would the Bush administration lower tariffs on the clothing that Thailand would like to export? What would the congressional Textile Caucus think of that?

            This could get interesting.

Globaphobics do Cancun

 

            What a difference from Seattle , 1999. Throughout the five days of the WTO’s Cancun ministerial meetings last month, I never saw anyone wearing a ski mask, never smelled tear gas, and never saw anyone try to smash through a security fence. Aspiring violent protestors were kept safely six miles away from the convention center.

            Lori Wallach, the acerbic director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch who had loomed large on the streets of Seattle , cast a small shadow in Cancun . I saw her at a sparsely attended press conference on September 13, where she bitterly blasted the White House for “bullying, bribery and arm-twisting,” offering scant evidence to support her name calling. Later, I saw her trying to work the press inside the convention center, but nobody seemed to be paying her much attention. Wallach remains a very angry woman, diminished politically because she really has little to say.

            Oxfam, by contrast, was big in Cancun — and for the right reason. Oxfam has something to say. The international human rights organization has produced well-documented reports on how the European Union’s sugar subsidies and the U.S. cotton program cause economic devastation in some of the poorest corners of Africa. Oxfam has earned its seat at the table.

            ActionAid, another international charity that is based in the United Kingdom and operates in about 40 poor countries, also wielded influence in Cancun , although not necessarily of a positive nature. Members of this private pressure group became members of the official government delegations of African countries like Uganda and Senegal . At the same time, other ActionAid activists worked the press inside the convention center. They mainly offered intemperate and unsubstantiated accusations about American and European alleged “bullying.” Predictably, some newspapers picked up that theme — the British Guardian, for instance, which has worked closely with Action Aid — and helped inflame the negotiating atmosphere.

            ActionAid, like Oxfam, rightly complains about rich-country tariffs and subsidies. But here is the ActionAid advice for poor countries: maintain your own high tariffs, use “safeguard” mechanisms to slap quotas on imports, “protect” your own “strategic products” from import competition, keep rigging your government contracts against foreigners, discourage foreign investment and the role of the private sector in your economies. What a wonderful prescription for perpetual poverty!                       

   

“Licensed to Kill, Inc.”

           

            The award for the funniest, most creative activist in Cancun goes to a young woman who identified herself as Corrie Prutspin, the senior vice president of corporate communications for a tobacco multinational named Licensed to Kill, Inc. Its website reports that Licensed to Kill is incorporated in Virginia , its business being “the manufacture and marketing of tobacco products in a way that each year kills over 400,000 Americans and 4.5 million other persons worldwide.” The corporation expressed gratitude to the VA state corporation commission for the registration, “noting that the societal restrictions on serial killing luckily do not apply to corporations.” The corporation’s other executives include Rich Fromdeath and Virginia Slime.

            Inside the convention center, not all reporters seemed to get the Yankee humor. “I’m here to praise the WTO for putting trade before public health,” Prutspin told two reporters from Latin countries who soberly wrote down everything that she said, apparently unaware that they were being put on.

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