WTO Meet in Hong Kong: I am Loving It!

There was a time when everyone was yelling at the developing nations: open your economy, remove subsidies, and all that. But I never thought the shout back time would come so soon. Consider this section of a Financial Express article:

Zambian Trade Minister Dipak Patel, who is also coordinator of the WTO's poorest member states, slammed the United States and Japan for seeking exemptions to protect their own industries.

"Developing countries, forced to liberalise by developed countries, have always been told that liberalisation will deliver gains ... It is not too late for developed countries to swallow their own medicine," he said in a statement.

In another article our commerce minister said:

Yesterday, reacting to EU's offer, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath had said the trade block wanted India to cut tariffs by 77 per cent, Brazil by 75 per cent while limiting the cuts for itself at 24 per cent.

"There has to be a calculation mistake, it cannot be that preposterous," he had quipped.

I rarely write about business but I do read it a lot and yet another Washington Post article I found something very interesting about law making and employer groups in the US.

In a rare schism, employer groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pressing to kill a Republican-sponsored measure that would require businesses to verify that all of their workers are in the United States legally and would increase penalties for hiring illegal employees.

I had fun reading all this, I am loving it.