Queen soy was a hit in Doha
Nothing will be the same in Mercosur
By Víctor Ego Ducrot Read Spanish Version
From the Mercosur Press Agency, Aug. 2, 2008
• The
lineup of Brazil with the United States and the European Union is a
consequence of the biofuel project. • The curse of
commodities-based income. • Lula and Cristina Fernández will
meet.
Words
are blown away by the wind. That appears to be the motto of
international and domestic politics in the latest generation.
Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, had compared the attitudes
of the U.S. and the E.U. in the negotiations on world trade to the
attitude of Joseph Goebbels, because — to Amorim — Brussels and
Washington applied the principle of the Nazi leader who said "If
you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."
Everything
changed, however, and very quickly. Brazil abandoned its traditional
partners in the so-called developing world, now clearly led by India,
and, at the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
accepted the proposals made by the U.S. and the E.U. on the subject
of industrial products. He also blew up the logical alliance he
should have kept with Argentina, inasmuch as that would give real
meaning to the Common Market of the South (Mercosur).
At
the end of last week’s meeting in Geneva, the WTO’s director general,
Pascal Lamy, introduced a proposal that enables developing countries
to reduce from 14 to 12 percent the products under the protection of
free trade, while it forces the U.S. to reduce its farm subsidies to
$14.5 billion.
Brazil
joined the proposal, but Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana was
among the first to reject the document. "To us, that paper, as
written, is not acceptable," he said.
A
report from the IPS news service hits the nail on the head. "What
Brazil is interested in right now is the Asian agricultural market,
especially in India and China," it said. Brazil now exports
manufactured goods to the U.S. and imports the same kind of goods
from that country, it said. The relationship of "imperialist
trade" that we have today is with China, not with the U.S., said
José Botafogo Gonçalvez, a prestigious diplomat who
heads the Brazilian Center for International Relations.
The
Reuters news agency, a faithful defender of the "free trade"
program sponsored by the WTO, said the following about President Da
Silva: "Brazil will continue to work toward entering bilateral
trade accords, after the failure of the world round of negotiations
known as the Doha Round."
The
Doha talks, begun in 2001, are intended to "increase the trade
flow throughout the world." The industrial powers want the
marginal countries to open their industrial and service markets but
resist any of the concessions demanded by what was once called The
Third World, i.e., central economies should sensibly lower
protectionist barriers, import tariffs, and subsidies to their local
producers, basically the farm sector.
This
time, Argentina, India, and South Africa became the hardest core in
terms of defending their industrial sectors, a position once held by
Brazil, which has now joined the U.S.-E.U. axis.
Why
did Brazil make that switch? Was it a surprise decision?
Not
at all. The move could be seen from a distance. Mindless of other
South American initiatives with a positive bent — such as the
creation of a regional defense body (without the U.S.) and support
for Venezuela and Bolivia, although maintaining strong pressure on
Evo Morales on matters of energy — Brazil opted to prioritize the
needs of its powerful, concentrated economic interests. It bet on the
biofuels project, whose main partner is the U.S., and is prioritizing
a scheme of speculative agricultural production that endangers
alimentary security and sovereignty on a global scale.
That
decision by Brazil puts a bad dent on Mercosur, inasmuch as the most
solid aspect of its structure so far — while an obstacle to its
development as a bloc with individual weight — has been its tariff
agreement, an agreement that fell apart in the WTO.
This
week, Lula will visit Argentina, to discuss the issue with his
counterpart, Cristina Fernández. Presumably, both presidents
will try to lower the decibel level of the noise created in Geneva.
In that sense, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez could play an
outstanding role. Reportedly, he will come to Buenos Aires at the
same time as Lula.
Never
before have the integrationist proclamations of the region’s
presidents contradicted some of their deeds. There is too much
secrecy, to much compliance with the corporate pressures from
business groups.
For
example, Lula must know that the great regional and international
interests of the soy industry and the biofuel project are the same as
those which, in the past four months, launched a hard destabilizing
offensive against the Argentine government and are sponsoring a
right-wing, neo-oligarchic bloc at the urging of the United States.
Does he care? Maybe not, despite his gestures and words.
It
appears Lula’s government leans that way, inasmuch as Foreign
Minister Amorim has just used the pages of the newspaper Folha de Sao
Paulo to establish his position, just a few hours before the meeting
between his boss and the Argentine president. "We couldn’t
remain hostage to the Argentine position. We had to make a difficult
decision," he said. "But if we hadn’t done it, we would
have been blamed for the collapse of the Doha Round."
"We
knew there was a difference in position with Argentina. But we
couldn’t be bound by the Argentine stance. We thought we might find a
specific solution for the problems of the Argentine government, that
perhaps they might be solved within Mercosur," Amorim added.
The
powerful Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín, the media spearhead of
the agricultural sector’s offensive against Fernández, said
this about the Brazilian minister’s statements: "[Amorim],
backed by President Lula da Silva, was on the opposite side of the
street from his colleague Jorge Taiana [the Argentine foreign
minister]. Brazil lined up with the United States and Europe. In
turn, the government of Cristina Kirchner moved to the side of India
and China, along with other countries, like Venezuela and Cuba. The
stakes were not small. Amorim agreed to lower protection for the
industrial sectors to a level that Argentina was not willing to
match, according to minister Taiana and the secretary of
International Economic Relations, Alfredo Chiaradia."
The
Clarín corporation will never miss an opportunity to stress
the discrepancies inside the Mercosur and to criticize the Argentine
government’s foreign policy. It might be prudent not to speak so much
and to act more coherently within the regional bloc, which has enough
internal problems already. Its smaller partners (Paraguay and
Uruguay) and other associates, especially Bolivia, cannot find the
place they should have.
Journalist
Víctor Ego Ducrot works for the Mercosur Press Agency. This
report was written in Buenos Aires.
