Free Republic

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - The global economic outlook just got brighter after this week's big stimulus from the European Central Bank, leading policymakers from around the world said Saturday. In a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they said a perkier Europe, coupled with a prolonged period of low oil prices, could help shore up the global economy following a period of underperformance that has prompted many forecasters to reduce their growth forecasts. "Lower oil prices and the big decision by ECB could further improve world economic outlook," said Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.

The bricks are crumbling in the house of global trade and the Brics, those fashionable emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China, are crumbling, too, wracked by inflation, slackening growth and the flight of hot money. In Geneva, Kamal Nath, the Indian Trade Minister, was gritting his teeth, doing his best to justify a wrecking operation that has earned him brickbats from all round. He has brought to an end a seven-year struggle for a global trade agreement that would open borders and reduce subsidies and he knows it. However, he was not looking at his negotiating partners, the Brazilian,...

Although most provisions of the current U.S. farm bill won't expire until September 2007, a group of senators recently proposed extending it until after the Doha Round of global trade negotiations is complete. Extending the farm bill -- damaging though it is -- will "send a signal to our trading partners," says one of the legislation's sponsors. It certainly will. At a time when leadership in the global trade talks is sadly lacking and desperately needed, the signal will be a big fat raspberry. An extension will also delay for yet another year the opportunity to reform a policy that...

Freeing trade in goods could boost global incomes by $461 billion by 2015, says the World Bank. Trade liberalization has cost sub-Saharan Africa $272 billion over the past 20 years, retorts the advocacy group Christian Aid. The debate over opening world markets, it seems, only goes to prove that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Yet peering through the fog of numbers, even free trade advocates at the World Bank acknowledge that the gains to be made from a successful conclusion to the World Trade Organization's Doha round of liberalization talks would be relatively modest. If all tariffs, subsidies...

Rich countries must abandon farm subsidies and give more market access to poor states if the Doha trade talks are to succeed, the head of the World Bank said today. Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz made his appeal amid fears that the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting of ministers in Hong Kong was in jeopardy because of the absence of progress on farm subsidies. Writing in the Financial Times, Wolfowitz said the need to reduce protection on agriculture was a central element of the Doha talks. He warned that unless serious concessions were made by all sides, the Doha talks would...

President George W. Bush signed the omnibus trade bill (H.R. 3009) into law on August 6. The legislation passed its final major hurdle on a razor thin vote of 215-212 in the US House of Representatives. The vote was held in the dead of night, at 3:30 AM on July 27. The afternoon before the vote, Mr. Bush had made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill to personally lobby Republicans for the package that included Fast Track trade negotiating authority. Fast track is a procedure that would eliminate the right of Congress to amend legislation drawn up to implement trade...