Freedom to trade

How the Hong Kong text affects health

Here's a quick look at how the latest WTO draft agreement affects health.

Services. While the agreement doesn't seem to roll back liberalisation in services, neither does it do much to push it forward - particularly with regards to LDCs. 

I've already written about the huge benefits that LDCs could gain if they were to open up to genuine competition in services, so it's a shame the text is not more explicit. Moreover, the lack of positive movement on this issue is a depressing testament to the effectiveness of the ideological scaremongering undertaken by the NGOs.

Tariffs on drugs. I didn't see anything on this in the draft text. Admittedly, I only got to look at it for a few minutes before Julian swiped it (he's commenting live on CNN right about now)!

TRIPS and public health. This was done and dusted before the negotiators got together in Hong Kong this week, and is now effectively a dead issue.  This closure renders many of the activist campaigns that were set up to campaign against TRIPS null and void.

Is that why members of MSF's Access to Medicines campaign have been running around Hong Kong all week trying desperately, but unsuccessfully, to resurrect the issue? Hopefully we will be hearing a lot less from them in future.

I'll post more when I've given the text a closer inspection.

Santa and his little foolish elves

“The WTO wants to get rid of poverty by freeing trade in services, and [Lockheed Martin] has the solution – let’s bomb them using our freely traded products!  Let’s get rid of poverty by killing the poor!”  This was the result of an impromptu gathering of craptivists taking their fight to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).  One was dressed as Santa Clause and the rest of them as his little elves coming to tell the evils of what they see as a bad deal. While it’s difficult to understand this kind of logic, it seems they think freely traded services is something that should be stopped.  Their misguided logic is ostensibly based on the notion that publicly-owned monopolies are better at providing services than private, competitive firms.

Of course, since these attention-deprived people were shouting at the top of their lungs, they attracted enough attention to get me – and many other members of the media - to listen to their tirade.  Being upset at the lack of representation in their arguments, I jumped into the fray and offered a different opinion to those who were interested in listening; mainly that trade  in services offers the chance for millions around the world to be freed from the shackles – like protectionism – of poverty.

Imagine how much worse off we would be if India’s wonderful IT sector, for example, was closed off from the rest of the world and unable to trade in an area that some firms hold a considerable comparative advantage. Without being able to trade, just think of how many millions of lines of code that would have to scrap from the fast-paced world of software design.  Some of those programs go a great length to helping improve medical techniques, which have a direct impact on people's lives.

Perhaps these people think we have too much software and that too many Indians are escaping poverty?

“The WTO wants to get rid of poverty by freeing trade in services, and [Lockheed Martin] has the solution – let’s bomb them using our freely traded products!  Let’s get rid of poverty by killing the poor!”  This was the result of an impromptu gathering of craptivists taking their fight to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).  One was dressed as Santa Clause and the rest of them as his little elves coming to tell the evils of what they see as a bad deal. While it’s difficult to understand this kind of logic, it seems they think freely traded services is something that should be stopped.  Their misguided logic is ostensibly based on the notion that publicly-owned monopolies are better at providing services than private, competitive firms.

Of course, since these attention-deprived people were shouting at the top of their lungs, they attracted enough attention to get me – and many other members of the media - to listen to their tirade.  Being upset at the lack of representation in their arguments, I jumped into the fray and offered a different opinion to those who were interested in listening; mainly that trade  in services offers the chance for millions around the world to be freed from the shackles – like protectionism – of poverty.

Imagine how much worse off we would be if India’s wonderful IT sector, for example, was closed off from the rest of the world and unable to trade in an area that some firms hold a considerable comparative advantage. Without being able to trade, just think of how many millions of lines of code that would have to scrap from the fast-paced world of software design.  Some of those programs go a great length to helping improve medical techniques, which have a direct impact on people's lives.

Perhaps these people think we have too much software and that too many Indians are escaping poverty?

Time to open up trade in legal services

Yesterday, Korean activists jumped into the harbour protesting at cheap rice. Yes, that's right --  they want to keep the price of rice HIGH! Needless to say, these folks didn't represent the majority of Koreans, who would benefit from cheaper rice -- but rather the vocal minority who fear competition. Over here in Hong Kong, we have free trade in most things, which is why our standards of living have risen so fast in the past 40 years. But there are some areas where competition is inhibited by our government. Legal services, in particular.

No matter how closed up the legal services were in the colonial days, there was at the very least, an easy way of hiring foreign barristers so as to be a check on the cost of hiring locally.

Ironically, it is barristers that have been pushing for an anti-trust law, which will supposedly promote 'competition'. But they are reluctant to promote competition within their own profession - a closed shop labour union called the HK Bar association.

Why not open up the Bar to free competition and allow solicitors to argue cases in all courts?

Andrew Shuen - Lion Rock Institute Hong Kong