TRADE, NOT AID

TRADE, NOT AID

Billions of dollars in international aid have been poured in the so called “Third World” —a name which covers too many different realities. Albeit this aid, extreme poverty and violence still ramble in the “benefitted” countries. An aid that most of the time ends up in the hands of corrupted dictators, war-lords and/or NGOs which make from poverty their business.
At the same time, the most powerful economies deny the weaker economies the chances of trading freely their produce. By doing so, they are not only denying basic liberties but contributing, decisevely, to the constant reproduction of poverty.

The US economy is not an efficient rice producer. So, the growers receive important federal subsidies. The US pours the rice overproduction in the world market, subjecting the efficient rice growers to an unfair competition, keeping them from entering certain markets or making them to aceept a price that does not cover the costs of production. For example, Uruguayan rice has been severely affected in the Brazilian market because of the artificial price of the US rice.
The economies of the so called G-7 pay lip service to poverty but at the same time do not open their markets to the more effcient produce of the poorer countries. At the same time, they force those economies to respect intellectual property rights (which is correct), open up to the imports of goods and services from their economies and enforce legislation regarding the environment, the labour force and the taxing system, no less than equivalent to those existing in the “First World” countries. The purpose is to strip off the weaker economies of some of their competitive advantages.

Free trade brings cooperation between individuals, builds citizenship and sense of self dignity. The opposite means violence, war and poverty. And no aid can change it.

We, the "devoloping" countries, need trade, not aid.