Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System | Date: 28 April 2011, 07:01
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Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System
By Paul Blustein
* Publisher: PublicAffairs
* Number Of Pages: 368
* Publication Date: 2009-09-22
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1586487183
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781586487188
Product Description:
As a linchpin of global capitalism, the World Trade Organization is both revered and reviled. In this book, financial journalist Paul Blustein tells the surprisingly entertaining and compelling story of how the WTO is sliding into dysfunctionality—which poses a new and grave menace to globalization itself.
In more than seven years of global talks the WTO has struggled and failed to resolve contentious differences between rich and developing nations. Now, with a worldwide recession underway, the WTO’s failure is contributing to a rise in protectionism—a sign that the world may not be so flat after all. Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations recounts, in vivid detail, how the highstakes negotiations went awry. At risk, Blustein argues, is the fate of the system that for six decades has opened the global economy and kept it from splintering.
Summary: From Abstract Trade Rules to Concrete Economic Outcomes
Rating: 5
"Next time you can bring a picture of an American farmer?" jabbed Kamal Nath, India's commerce and industry minister, during one tense negotiating session. "Because I have never actually seen one. I have only seen US conglomerates masquerading as farmers."
Bringing pictures in and out of the World Trade Organization seems to be an acquired custom. When Pascal Lamy, the former European trade commissioner, was elected director general of the WTO, he brought down the poster-sized photos of GATT round completion ceremonies that adorned the corridor outside his office at Centre William Rappard in Geneva, and replaced them with abstract modern art. And as the WTO's July 2008 ministerial meeting collapsed into confusion and anger, Mexico's ambassador brought to the conference room a large black-and-white picture of Senator Smoot and Congressman Hawley, the two men who in 1930 gave their name to the protectionist tariffs that marked the descent of the world economy into the Great Depression. "Mr. Chairman, please put this picture on the front door. Ask the concierge not to let them into this building--and certainly not their spirits."
Paul Blustein brings many portraits to his narrative, including those of an American cotton producer, an Indian laborer, and other individuals at both ends of of the chain that links abstract trade rules to concrete economic outcomes. Apart from Pascal Lamy, many officials who attended the Doha conference in November 2001 had left the scene or moved to other unrelated positions at the time the book concludes with a still unfinished 'Doha Development Agenda', as the ongoing round of WTO negotiations is called. Like the author, many people present at Doha wished they could have attended the completion ceremony, not only for the photo opportunity or in order to bring the narrative to a closure, but because much is at stake in the discussions shaping the future of the world trade system.
A Washington Post journalist, Paul Blustein specializes in writing essays about the travails of international economic negotiations. In his foreword, he notes that as a book writer he is dependent on financial support from foundations or think tanks because his books have no prospects of hitting the best-seller lists. Oh yes, Mr. Blustein, they should certainly hit the list. And with a little faith in the general public's fair-mindedness, they will.
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