These subsidies throw production out of whack. It stops following the market’s precise and shifting signals and instead focuses on uninformed, uneconomic and lobby-motivated political dictates. Poor nations have pushed hard on this point. That they have achieved success shows they are no longer totally irrelevant to the world economy.

 

But they did not advance in lowering tariffs, making the Hong Kong conference only a relative victory. The European Union used its power to keep trade barriers in place, barriers that hurt its own consumers and the development of the world’s poorest nations. These nations are constantly knocking the EU’s door to sell us their products, meet our needs at a good price and, from that, be able to abandon poverty. The old, hypocritical Europe, allied with reactionary and protectionist France, made sure no one touched the tariffs. According to the World Bank, , the average European agriculture (poor countries main export) tariff is 20 percent, while that of the US is 9 percent. Lowering tariffs isn’t everything because free trade can be blocked or reduced in other ways –more regulations, common tax laws, etc…– but it is important.

 

Nonetheless, it is not the rich world that had the most to do in this area. Poor countries are also the most protectionist. India, despite major steps forward, has a tariff on agricultural products of 101 percent. Many other nations have tariffs over 50 percent. In the textile market, the situation is more or less the same. Poor countries’ regimes are their people’s worst enemies.