Trade and the Developing World in the 21st Century.

AuthorZamora, Stephen
PositionBook Review

By Beverly M. Carl, Transnational Publishers, Ardsley, N.Y., 2001. pp. 550. $150.00

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration's war on terrorism has monopolized our attention. There has been relatively little discussion, however, of the need to address the underlying conditions that provide the environment in which terrorism may flourish--principally, the endemic poverty and inequality of wealth that afflicts many regions of the world. This is not surprising because attacking world poverty has not been a high priority of the industrialized nations for decades. Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. government adopted a "trade not aid" agenda that emphasized the need for developing nations to promote free trade and foreign investment, and de-emphasized the responsibility of the world's wealthy nations to take an active part in combating world poverty. The United States's contributions to foreign aid--small for an affluent country--declined, along with those of other developed countries. (1) Indeed, many people in the United States advocated dissolution of development agencies, such as the World Bank, which were seen as unnecessary in the new world economy, an economy in which an end to poverty would come from adoption of free market policies, not from foreign aid. The complacency that attended the U.S. economic prosperity in the 1990s helped us ignore what has been happening in those parts of the world that have not shared in this prosperity.

By the 1990s, as world economic growth expanded dramatically, "trade not aid" and neo-liberal economic reforms had become the dominant agendas of economic development agencies nationally and internationally. (2) Mexico, Argentina, and other nations with protectionist and centrally planned economies embraced neo-liberal trade and investment reforms, as well as competitive markets. Economic growth in the most successful developing countries produced many new millionaires and expanded the middle classes. The adoption of numerous free trade agreements, bilateral as well as multilateral, and the successful termination of the Uruguay Round Agreements, resulting in the transformation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO), confirmed the ascendancy of the neo-liberal trade and investment agenda espoused by the U.S. administrations for twenty years.

Despite economic gains in many countries, poverty reigns in many regions of the world, including those that are most susceptible to terrorist ferment. (3) Because of this, one does not have to be a foe of "globalization" to reassess the "trade not aid" agenda. If U.S. society engages foreign terrorists without also concerning itself with the economic injustices of the distant lands in which the terrorists operate, the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT