India Stands Firm, and the Rest of Us Benefit

The latest round of WTO talks have collapsed over the issue of allowing Wall Street to loot food supplies:

The World Trade Organization failed Thursday to ratify an agreement designed to streamline the global trade system, frustrating a late push by U.S. officials to convince India to reach a compromise that would have secured a deal.

"I do not have the necessary elements that would lead to me to conclude that a breakthrough is possible," WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo said. "We got closer—significantly closer—but not quite there."

The WTO reached an agreement in December on the Indonesian resort island of Bali to streamline customs procedures. The deadline to ratify that agreement was Thursday, but India declined to do so without a parallel agreement allowing developing countries more freedom to subsidize and stockpile food.

Some economists have estimated that the Bali agreement, which seeks to standardize customs practices and remove red tape, could save WTO members more than $1 trillion eventually.

Failure to achieve a consensus before the WTO's own deadline deals a severe blow to the Geneva-based body's credibility, already tenuous after years of stalled talks on tariff reductions. The trade-easing deal was viewed as a way to create some momentum.

As a raft of regional trade deals moves ahead, the WTO's ability to act as a catalyst for global trade liberalization is in doubt.

India had insisted for weeks that it wouldn't sign off on the Bali pact unless the group comes to a faster accord on exempting food-subsidy and stockpiling programs like India's from current WTO rules that limit them.

Remember when international food prices spiked a few years ago because of aggressive market manipulation by Wall Street in the US and the City in London?

The "subsidies" in question are providing sub-market price food to poor people in those countries, and stockpiles to mitigate market manipulation by the banksters.

India wants a permanent solution to this, they (correctly) consider it a matter of national security, but what they got was non-binding language that would render any attempt to protect their citizens from the vicissitudes of the market inoperative by 2017.

I approve.