A brief think piece with some interesting figures in it from Atlantic Monthly about how globalisation might help poor countries if the West actually practiced what it preached with free trade.
“In the Uruguay Round of tariff reductions, concluded in 1994, the West pledged to reduce agricultural subsidies by 36 percent; in return, the developing countries would lower their tariffs on agricultural imports.
The developing countries met their part of the bargain by halving their average tariffs. The developed countries reneged: subsidies have in recent years made up almost 40 percent of the value of Western farm outputabout the same as when Uruguay started.
Of the $90 billion spent on crop supports over the past five years, some $60 billion went to the top 10 percent of recipientsFortune 500 companies, city-dwelling farm owners, and big agribusiness.”
