The WTO Free Trade Agenda

Paper Summary:

This paper explains the WTO's agenda and its effect on Africa and Europe. It contends that a freer trading Europe would be a prosperous one, not only in terms of greater economic growth for power houses like Britain or Germany but for development for the stagnant Portugal and the emerging Poland. It looks at how it would also have the potential to act as a saviour for the poor and developing world, allowing them to rise from entrenched poverty into prosperity.

From the Paper:

"The most incendiary and infamous interest group who would stand to lose would be those farmers who benefit from the Common agricultural policy. The CAP is not only an anachronistic subsidy in an age of free trade and globalisation, it is also an enormous one; it consumes nearly fifty percent of the EU's multi billion dollar budget (www.bbc.co.uk). Put simply, the realisation of the WTO's agenda would see a straight loss of L43 billion for the EU's farmers (the total of their subsidy in 2005 figures, www.bbc.co.uk) the loss of their protected standard of living and of their privileged access to the lucrative single European market. One would expect that, now on a level playing field, it would only be a matter of time before African farmers began to offer the European consumer cheap food and other goods which presented serious competition for their European counterparts. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• www.bbc.co.uk - various articles
• Fowler, P (2002) Milking the CAP, How Europe's Dairy Regime is devastating livelihoods in the developing world Available at: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/downloads/bp34_cap.pdf
• Friedman, M (1980) Free to choose London : Secker and Warburg
• Hayek, FA (1961) Competition as a discovery procedure, Economics and knowledge
• Montesquieu (1989), The Spirit of the laws, trans & ed AM Cohler, Cambridge: CUP

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• Term Paper # 98481 : "The WTO and Trade Dispute"
• Essay # 15315 : "North American Free Trade Agreement"
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