With respect to Bhagwati, last time I checked he was fervently pro-free trade but was sympathetic to capital controls of various sorts. I see that in this letter what he is unhappy about vis a vis the WTO is the assertion by rich countries of strong patent rules and intellectual property protection. Is this combination of positions still a fair characterization of his overall position? If it is, I am quite sympathetic with it. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 11:32 AM Subject: Re: Desai on globalization
>Daniel Davies wrote:
>
>>But I'm really posting to point out that Bhagwati
>>doesn't agree that the WTO is necessarily good for the
>>poor, and indeed in this letter to the FT seems to be
>>expressing pretty severe misgivings about the process
>>of globalisation:
>>
>>http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=010220001132&que
ry=bhagwati
>>
>>I've got a lot of sympathy for his position (rather
>>like Rakesh's own, I think), of having started out as
>>an unashamed cheerleader for free trade in goods, then
>>gradually realising that all your cohorts are
>>interested in marching on to free capital flows,
>>global intellectual property, MAI, etc, etc (but never
>>free global labour markets -- laissez-faire, but not
>>laissez-passer). My guess is that within five years,
>>Bhagwati will be on our side.
>
>Here's what Bhagwati said about IP when Liza & I interviewed him:
>
>>I'm more optimistic about getting something in the ILO. No
>>connection between these two, very much like the early days when
>>hillary was condemning the pharmaceuticals for vaccines being too
>>highly priced, then bill clinton's mickey cantor was trying to
>>[unintel] in the WTO, which he managed, quite successfully. Which
>>then meant that pharmaceuticals were going to get higher prices,
>>therefore make vaccines more expensive for the poor countries! Here
>>was total disconnect between 2 members of the household. [laughs] Of
>>course hillary eventually backed down. But the point is if you look
>>back on intellectual property protection, so many poor countries
>>protested and resisted. This is why I wanted to send $1000 to ralph
>>nader -- and then got frightened off [laughs] -- it was not the WTO
>>which asked for, we forced it down the throats of the poor
>>countries. The AIDS situation, comes up in the public domain and the
>>young people say, ah, the WTO has intellectual property protection.
>>It shouldn't have been there in the first place! It was just done
>>for political reasons....
>>
>>IPP, I think we really did something quite wrong. The other day on
>>an indian meeting vandana shiva was talking about intellectual
>>property from quite a different perspective, bio-piracy. And she
>>said many of the developing countries had developed their own
>>knowhow on using all kinds of genetic material from the rain forest
>>and if you were improving on it you should pay some sort of royalty
>>because this is age-old knowledge, etc. which you are building. You
>>can't rule it out altogether it's an interesting argument actually,
>>[laughs] I sided with her pointing out some of the things on IPP,
>>there were all these people like Winston Lord and the whole
>>establishment of this CFR [Council on Foreign Relations, where JB is
>>a fellow this year] and the business establishment, they thought I
>>was a green man from Mars for a change. [laughs]
>
>
>By the way, here's what he said about U.S. labor (Rakesh, you reading
>the archives?):
>
>>We have this strange position, we want these workers rights to be
>>asserted, to get into the WTO, the administration is doing it just
>>because it refuses to engage Sweeney in a meaningful dialogue. I
>>don't see Sweeney as someone who's cockeyed or anything, I've read
>>his book, America needs a raise. A lot of it is really quite
>>sensible. Where he speaks from the heart is really quite fantastic
>>in my opinion. I've seen him and I know his stuff. Smith who I think
>>is his right hand man on legal matters. I don't see that they're not
>>amenable to argument and dialogue, I just don't see that. But I
>>think the administration has just coasted along with whatever they
>>want because they cant be bothered. I think partly they think if
>>they engage in dialogue the support will just wither away. I just
>>don't see that as a way to hold on to that support.
>
>Sometimes he sounds like a William Gaddis character.
>
>Doug
>