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What the aversion to global trade says about Europe and America
TPIP (TransPacific Partnership Agreement) is having some difficulties, which is a Great Shame. If it will work in the Far East, where China will sign the agreement, it will help diminish the flood of Chinese cheap knock-offs. The Chinese were not asked to participate in the formation of the TPIP, but have indicated that they will sign it. Why?
Because China has discovered the virtues of International Patents protecting Chinese hi-tech products. (Wow! Now that they've virtually stolen a good number of them for their own production of knock-offs sold to the world!) China has become a very-large depositor of international patents.
Unfortunately the polemic (yes, that's what it has become) reminds one of the 1920s when governments tried to protect their balance of payments by refusing imports. Which helped precipitate the Great Depression.
And in Europe, they see TTIP (the Atlantic version of TPIP) as a subterfuge for getting "American chlorine-tainted poultry" into European supermarkets.
So, the real-story (underlying the perhaps exaggerated headlines) is a bit confused/confusing (meaning intended). But, why should chicken-meat be the Whipping Boy ... ?
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FORGET left and right. These days, it is often said, the real dividing line in politics is between open-door liberals and pull-up-the-drawbridge nationalists. Like most grand claims, this one can be overdone. But the pummelling that international trade is taking on both sides of the Atlantic suggests there is something to it.
Why has trade become the piñata of politics? Partly because it fits the anti-elite mood. Trade deals are cooked up behind closed doors by obscure bureaucrats. Negotiating positions are hidden from voters. The economic changes wrought by technology and competition should perhaps shoulder more of the blame for job insecurity. But it is easier to rail against the hand of a politician who signs a trade deal than the invisible hand of globalisation.
So far, so transatlantic. But there are telling differences between Europe and America. In the EU, opposition to TTIP is at its sharpest in Germany and Austria, two export powerhouses with low unemployment. The thousands of protesters who rallied in Hanover last weekend, as Barack Obama rolled into town to instil energy into the flagging talks, or the Dutch campaigners gathering signatures to put TTIP to a referendum, fulminate not against lost jobs but greedy multinationals and the lower food and environmental standards they believe the deal will bring.
But in America the anti-trade message resonates most in post-industrial regions that lost out from NAFTA, a trade deal struck in the 1990s with Canada and Mexico, as well as the accession of China to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This led to huge job losses as American firms struggled to compete with cheap imports. In his Hanover speech Mr Obama acknowledged that governments must do more for globalisation’s losers.
Why the difference? Pascal Lamy, who served as the EU’s trade commissioner before running the WTO from 2005 to 2013, distinguishes between the “old” and “new” worlds of trade deals. The old world, dominated by national producers, was about opening markets and cutting tariffs. The new one aims to reduce differences between sets of national or regional rules that hinder trade in a world of transnational production and long supply chains. In the old world, trade negotiators battled producers who sought protection from international competition. In the new, officials must contend with consumers who fear that the domestic standards they cherish will be watered down.
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TPIP (TransPacific Partnership Agreement) is having some difficulties, which is a Great Shame. If it will work in the Far East, where China will sign the agreement, it will help diminish the flood of Chinese cheap knock-offs. The Chinese were not asked to participate in the formation of the TPIP, but have indicated that they will sign it. Why?
Because China has discovered the virtues of International Patents protecting Chinese hi-tech products. (Wow! Now that they've virtually stolen a good number of them for their own production of knock-offs sold to the world!) China has become a very-large depositor of international patents.
Unfortunately the polemic (yes, that's what it has become) reminds one of the 1920s when governments tried to protect their balance of payments by refusing imports. Which helped precipitate the Great Depression.
And in Europe, they see TTIP (the Atlantic version of TPIP) as a subterfuge for getting "American chlorine-tainted poultry" into European supermarkets.
So, the real-story (underlying the perhaps exaggerated headlines) is a bit confused/confusing (meaning intended). But, why should chicken-meat be the Whipping Boy ... ?
_______________________________