Fair Trade versus Free Trade

"Greenpeace said the deal was 'a long way from equity and
sustainability.'"
"Oxfam called it 'a betrayal of development promises.'"
~ reflection on WTO summit 2005, Hong Kong

WTO has wrapped up its conference yesterady at my home town Hong Kong. The local cantonese media finally had given the right justice to the incidents within HKCEC than on the street.

It has nevertheless reached a "so-call" agreement to end these agricultural subsidy at 2013, even the deal was somewhat favor by EU and US. I have written last week that my positioning is PRO-WTO, PRO-free trade. This agreement has no doubt promote a degree, minor degree towards their desired objectives. Let's hope this deal would be fully executed, as planned, and as voluntarily honoured.

I came up by an editorial article (by 左丁山) at Apple Daily (蘋果日報) yesterday. He stated that "fair trade" is just a term with different perspective varied between rich and poor nation. To the EU and US, fair trade would define as local farmers would sell their goods at the same low price as those from poor nations. On the opposite end the farmers would be able to sell their goods as a far more competitive price due to their labor pays.

I agree, at some agree, of this review on WTO. WTO should be the common ground, an open-end opportunity to discuss exactly this: "Fair Trade versus Free Trade". Without WTO the global economics would be more heavily injusticed than what we have now.....

p.s. The Korean farmers got the voice heard. Though it would probably be meaningless to the Korean trade minister as each nation cast only one vote each.

A side note: congradulation to Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Bono be acknowledged as the Person of the Year by Time magazine.