Misadventures of the most favored nations: clashing egos, inflated ambitions, and the great shambles of the world trade system PDF
Preview Misadventures of the most favored nations: clashing egos, inflated ambitions, and the great shambles of the world trade system
1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page i MISADVENTURES OF THE MOST FAVORED NATIONS 1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page ii ALSO BY PAUL BLUSTEIN The Chastening And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out) 1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page iii MISADVENTURES OF THE MOST FAVORED NATIONS Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System PAUL BLUSTEIN New York 1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page iv Copyright © 2009 by Paul Blustein. Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107. PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call (800) 810–4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Brent Wilcox Text set in 10.75 point Simoncini Garamond Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blustein, Paul. Misadventures of the most favored nations / Paul Blustein.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1-58648–718–8 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. World Trade Organization. 2. International trade. 3. Commercial treaties. 4. International economic relations. I. Title. HF1385.B58 2009 382’.92—dc22 2009014881 First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page v To Yoshie “This page left intentionally blank.” 1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page vii CONTENTS AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix 1 | Paging Mr. Black 1 2 | The Intergalactic Trade Organization 17 3 | The WTO and Its Discontents 41 4 | Clueless in Seattle 57 5 | “There Are Only A-Pluses” 83 6 | Removing the Stain 109 7 | The Uprising of the Rest 131 8 | Jewels and Pirates 157 9 | His Holiness, Pope Bob 173 10 | One Chicken McNugget 199 11 | When Peter Met Susan 223 12 | Even the Loopholes Have Got Loopholes 247 13 | Losing It 261 14 | If Only There Were a Better Way 277 NOTES 297 INDEX 327 vii “This page left intentionally blank.” 1586487188-Blustein:1stPages 7/13/09 1:38 PM Page ix AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Having written two books about the International Monetary Fund, and now this one about the World Trade Organization, I suppose I can lay claim to being the world’s foremost author of behind-the-scenes accounts about vaguely sinister international economic institutions with three initials. This spe- cialty, I’ll admit, is an acquired taste. But in the process of covering trade as part of my beat at the Washington Post, I became increasingly convinced that the WTO, like the IMF, is a tremendously important institution deserving of thorough journalistic dissection, and that behind the Doha Round’s ups and downs lay many dramas of both individual and collective significance. In ad- dition, I realized that the WTO offers an ideal prism through which to illumi- nate many of the pluses and minuses of globalization, as the trade body is arguably the most essential element in the glue that holds the globalized econ- omy together. So when the Post offered a generous buyout in 2006 to senior staff members, I accepted and began work on this book as journalist in resi- dence in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings In- stitution, at the gracious invitation of Lael Brainard, the program’s director. Except for Antarctica, which has yet to emerge as a major power in the WTO, I traveled to all the world’s continents in the process of gathering mate- rial for the book. Along the way, I benefited enormously from the kindness of friends, strangers, and sources who helped make my journeys both productive and memorable. A few examples: In my efforts to gain the perspective of French farmers, I stayed with my old friend Blair Pethel, who has chucked journalism to start a new and amazing life as a vintner in Burgundy. Not only did Blair put me up at his wondrous seventeenth-century home in the town of Beaune, but he also arranged interviews with his farmer neighbors and interpreted for me as well. ix
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