Most of those who either preach or negotiate free trade are just like a Peeping Tom in a nudist camp.

Sir, Alan Beattie, referring to the possible escalation of trade wars writes: “At the time the WTO is most needed, its failings become ever more manifest. Without reform, the organization itself will suffer severe, possibly fatal, collateral damage from the US-China struggle” "A global trading system under fire” October 22.

Beattie also quotesPascal Lamy, a former head of the WTO: “Whether we like Trump or not — and I do not like Trump, I think he must be credited with one thing, which is to have put this issue of WTO reform on the table.”

Having been busy denouncing failed and dangerous bank regulations, I have not followed WTO for more than a decade but, back in 2006 and 2007, I remember Grant Aldonas, Fred Bergsten and Martin Wolf already opining strongly on the need for WTO to reform.

The reforms requested were not only about efficiency… they were about the real core of free trade.

For instance Grant Aldonas held that the success of any reforms, depended on “WTO negotiators recognizing where the conventional mercantilist approach has taken them [so as to] turn around, head back up the road and chart a new course to achieve the development goals that were their original destination” “Why trade negotiators need driving lessons” May 3, 2006.

In a letter, I agreed stating “Currently trade negotiations, instead of opening the doors to the greener pastures we all wish for, feels more like someone corralling you in, to brand you.”

Grant Aldonas later also suggested a “plurilateral agreement among all WTO members willing to move directly to free trade on a global basis”, “A fresh free trade agenda for Doha”, July 13, 2007.

Again I agreed: “Just like in a nudist camp, we need to separate the real nudists from the Peeping Toms. Only this would allow us to conform a true and honest free trade core. It is clear that many of those who profess a belief in free trade fake it, since how could you otherwise explain the sort of perverse satisfaction many show from entering into negotiating processes that hinders the free trade from really advancing. The true spirit of free trade does not stand a chance against these saboteurs and who are simply too scared of taking off their protections, but want to enjoy the view anyhow.”

When Martin Wolf in April 2007 opined “If free trade is really as good as we say it is, then why should we negotiate about it”, I responded: “Indeed,you do not go to a nudist camp to play strip-poker!”

Sir, most of those holier than thou free-traders bashing President Donald Trump for imposing restrictions on trade, are just like a Peeping Tom preaching the merits of nudity, for other.

WTO bureaucrats also help make WTO inutile, as a result of many of them being engaged, primarily, in the protection of their own turf.

Protectionism comes in all colors and shapes. Those tariffs and subsidies imbedded in the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, are many times more costly to the world than any trade tariffs Trump can come up with.

PS. I myself must confess that, even though I am in principle all for free trade, I often find myself worrying about that all deficits and surpluses are not made equal, some are better, some are much worse.

@PerKurowski

You must solve the dollar problem with real and not virtual solutions

Sir we have a saying in Venezuela that goes something like “the baby’s crying and the mother is pinching him” and something like that came to my mind when reading Fred Bergsten’s “How to solve the problem of the dollar”. December 11.

If the dollar is really in problems and there are no other currencies willing or able to shoulder its weakness, offering to the trillions of dollars existing in the financial oceans the possibility of converting them into the Special Drawing Rights currency baskets and of which $34bn of value are currently swimming around in the bathtub of the International Monetary Fund, does not seem a solution that carries enough punch. This is something that Bergsten recognizes, but only after he has made his case for radical and insufficient solutions.

Also hearing that the funds would be recycled into the same securities currently offered and that the funds gold holdings of (only) $80bn could provide additional backing, just makes me want to cry more… and perhaps run for the gold myself.

The fact is that if you cannot diversify yourself out of a currency into other currencies then the fault might not lie with the initial weak currency but with all of them and, if so, then you diversify yourself into assets, and then you might realize that the US is not so weak after all, at least if they decide doing something about their weaknesses, like raising the taxes on their petrol/gas consumption to European levels.

You see sometimes the most important assets of a nation are not so apparent because they live in that hazy world of public policies that could be corrected. The US in their gasoline consumption and in their health sector has a world of this type of hidden assets just waiting to be taken to the market.

WTO, please take your time!

Sir, Fred Bergsten’s “Plan B for world trade: go regional” August 16, reads a bit like a bewildered courtiers screaming out “The Kings is dead, long live the King” anxious to regain their footing and sense of order in life.

As I see it though, instead of rushing into new negotiations, desperately looking for results, any results, more could be gained from using the declared time out for some very serious house cleaning activities, destined to put some order into what is frequently described as the spaghetti bowl of trade agreements. Any global trading system, in order to be credible, needs at one point of time to be understandable and there is a feeling that there has been quite a long time since ordinary subjects, as I, have been able to understand and much less identify with what the monarchs were up to.

I have recently had the luck of being able to participate in a course about the Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) software being developed by The World Bank in collaboration with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and that helps to provide access to the major trade and tariffs data. After that course, the real unanswered question for me was how on earth did we get anywhere without instruments like these? Or, does anyone really know where we really are as a world in terms of trade? WTO, please, take your time before you start rushing again, otherwise you might really lose us.