September 13, 2003
#416 - He Doesn't Play Well With Others

From "America set to torpedo trade talks", via the Guardian (UK):

Fears are growing that the United States could effectively walk away from crucial trade talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun aimed at solving the deepening economic and social crisis afflicting billions of the world's poorest people.

As the World Trade Organisation negotiations entered their final hours, business leaders feared that efforts to strike a ground-breaking deal on trade distortions harming the developing world were in the balance.

A high level source in the UK delegation told The Observer said: 'It's difficult to know what the Americans want. They're staying in their hotel. They're behaving like the Soviet Union in the Eighties. It's making it difficult to know what they want.'

If the US walks away from the talks it would plunge the world into a disastrous financial crisis as it sought to strike trade deals on its own terms with individual nations.

Apparently, Bush's "if you're not with us, you're against us" doctrine applies to world trade as well as disastrous military missions.

Comments