Jackie Danicki

Excellent post from Alex Singleton of the GI:

The real forces of conservatism today are organizations like the World Development Movement, War on Want and Christian Aid. They favour managed trade, wanting to preserve the past. Christian Aid took a major hit to its credibility after it came out in support of textiles quotas - invented to restrict developing countries having access to rich country markets. This contradicted their good stance on the Common Agricultural Policy - because they don’t like the idea that production patterns between different developing countries would change…

The good news is that the forces of conservatism are losing. Year by year, millions of people are being lifted out of poverty - by following the “wrong” economic policies, rather than the mercantilist ones that the forces of conservatism advocate. It is these “wrong” policies that have lifted 200,000,000 Chinese out of poverty. Private investment in water is overcoming the critics and on the rise again, increasing by 36% in 2004. There may be a textiles fudge for the moment, but textiles quotas will be fully gone in three years. Tariff barriers are going down around the world.

Of course we should recognize that liberalization isn’t always an easy process. We should help adapt to the opening up of trade. But just because there is a cost for transitioning to free trade, we should not allow ourselves to throw away all the benefits.

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