The Forum > Article Comments > Doha closes, another opens > Comments
Doha closes, another opens : Comments
By Mark Thirwell, published 28/7/2006Despite the Doha round's death, there remains hope for global trade.
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The death of Doha is an early dress rehearsal for the end of globalisation. Those who bury it will be those who designed it and proselytised for it - the US and Europe.
Certainly it is the US now as so-called unipolar global leader in both politics and economics, who should be loudly condemned. This includes our John Howard, who is certainly proving the words of social scientists, that Howard has the political knack but not the historical knowledge.
As farmers one of our hopes regarding the Doha Round was an ethical arrangement to end agricultural subsidies, Australian farmers being the only ones in the Western world now not being subsidised.
Not that Aussie farmers have been crying to be subsidised, it is a fact that the US and EU the main culprits, can use subsidies not only in a party political way, as George W Bush has done, but can also dump cheap subsidised products on non-Western markets as they have done in South America encouraging farmers to grow drugs.
So it looks like the main culprits will still hold the big end of the stick, similar to the way both America and Britain have still won their way with the UN, the US still crippling the UN with a wornout veto which should have been chucked out with the end of the Cold War.
Both in global economics and politics never has our world needed Immanuel Kant's idea of a democratic global federation than it does right now