LexisNexis(TM) Academic - Document
Financial Times (London, England)
September 6, 2005 Tuesday
London Edition 1
SECTION: LEADER; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 471 words
HEADLINE: A sordid textiles deal The EU-China agreement is a victory only for expediency
BODY:
So, it appears, a deal has been done to untangle the textile quota mess between the European Union and China. Barring an even more spectacular degree of pigheadedness from the EU member states than hitherto, the blocked bras will be released from warehouses and some of next year's Chinese import quota reduced in turn.
The shelves will be full for the autumn season. Europe's garment producers will be happy. The deal is a great success for European trade diplomacy and everyone wins. Everyone, that is, except the retailers that will be forced to switch their clothing sourcing for next year to less efficient producers, the European consumers who will end up paying for it and, most importantly, the battered and beleaguered principle of free trade.
Arguments against striking deals like this do not lose one iota of their force just because a sordid short-term fix gets the issue off the front pages barely in time for this week's EU-China summit. Delaying the world's best textile producer from capturing its fair share of the market was a bad idea then and remains one now.
It is particularly worrying how shallow is the support for real free trade, as opposed to the ineptly managed version, in Europe. "Free trade is right but you have got to get there in stages," Tony Blair, who makes a big deal out of banging the drum for economic liberalism in the EU, told the BBC yesterday. "It is not unreasonable for some of those people who are producers in Europe to say: we have our own interests in this process of transition."
In fact, those producers had a full decade of warning that the quotas were coming to an end, for at least the last three years of which China's competitiveness in textiles was evident. And Mr Blair's words should ring particularly hollow with the UK's own textile companies, many of whom have done a good and prescient job of restructuring themselves into high-end specialist manufacturers or design and distribution houses. They will now suffer next year from lack of access to low-cost Chinese production, as will European retailers.
Moreover, the entire episode has fed a belief in the developing world that the rules of free trade are there to be changed by the rich countries if it is politically expedient. Often this charge is not true: the World Trade Organisation is one of the few multilateral organisations where small poor countries can force large rich nations to change policy through litigation. But sometimes it is. And mid-course corrections like these send a terrible message to the other members of the WTO who are being asked to offer up politically difficult cuts in tariffs as part of the troubled Doha round.
Yesterday's agreement was a victory for news management and little else. No one who cares about efficiency, fairness and the future of free trade should be celebrating.
LOAD-DATE: September 5, 2005
September 6, 2005 Tuesday
London Edition 1
SECTION: LEADER; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 471 words
HEADLINE: A sordid textiles deal The EU-China agreement is a victory only for expediency
BODY:
So, it appears, a deal has been done to untangle the textile quota mess between the European Union and China. Barring an even more spectacular degree of pigheadedness from the EU member states than hitherto, the blocked bras will be released from warehouses and some of next year's Chinese import quota reduced in turn.
The shelves will be full for the autumn season. Europe's garment producers will be happy. The deal is a great success for European trade diplomacy and everyone wins. Everyone, that is, except the retailers that will be forced to switch their clothing sourcing for next year to less efficient producers, the European consumers who will end up paying for it and, most importantly, the battered and beleaguered principle of free trade.
Arguments against striking deals like this do not lose one iota of their force just because a sordid short-term fix gets the issue off the front pages barely in time for this week's EU-China summit. Delaying the world's best textile producer from capturing its fair share of the market was a bad idea then and remains one now.
It is particularly worrying how shallow is the support for real free trade, as opposed to the ineptly managed version, in Europe. "Free trade is right but you have got to get there in stages," Tony Blair, who makes a big deal out of banging the drum for economic liberalism in the EU, told the BBC yesterday. "It is not unreasonable for some of those people who are producers in Europe to say: we have our own interests in this process of transition."
In fact, those producers had a full decade of warning that the quotas were coming to an end, for at least the last three years of which China's competitiveness in textiles was evident. And Mr Blair's words should ring particularly hollow with the UK's own textile companies, many of whom have done a good and prescient job of restructuring themselves into high-end specialist manufacturers or design and distribution houses. They will now suffer next year from lack of access to low-cost Chinese production, as will European retailers.
Moreover, the entire episode has fed a belief in the developing world that the rules of free trade are there to be changed by the rich countries if it is politically expedient. Often this charge is not true: the World Trade Organisation is one of the few multilateral organisations where small poor countries can force large rich nations to change policy through litigation. But sometimes it is. And mid-course corrections like these send a terrible message to the other members of the WTO who are being asked to offer up politically difficult cuts in tariffs as part of the troubled Doha round.
Yesterday's agreement was a victory for news management and little else. No one who cares about efficiency, fairness and the future of free trade should be celebrating.
LOAD-DATE: September 5, 2005
posted by Eastlaw at 10:04 PM
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