Craig’s Diatribe on the USA and Global Economy (# 2)

June 6, 2008

This blog entry (number 2 in a series) is to try and express my viewpoints on the current state of the USA Economy, my predictions for the future and how we are no longer a localized economy but now are part of a GLOBAL economy.

Where are we NOW? Commodity Prices:

Before I go into the Global Economy for Commodities and Fuel/power Prices I need to say that a LOT (maybe as much as one third in some cases) of the increase of Costs is from the weak dollar … as such, most of this post is dedicated to the supply and demand issues of the global econony.

The has been great interest in Oil prices… as well as there should be… I talked about Oil being in our everyday life before… as a commodity…. But I need to address some misconceptions about what the general public believes about the Price of Oil today.

First: OIL IS A COMMODITY… that means the prices are subject to supply and demand…. There is NO QUESTION that China and India play a significant role in the new use of oil… as a fuel and as a commodity for other applications…. This is a result of the rest of the world using those countries for lower prices thus bring in more Currency (Money) into those countries and lifting them out of the poverty (and to satisfy our own greed for more at lower prices and greater profits) that we saw them suffering from… now that we have awoken the sleeping giant, so to speak, there is no putting them back to sleep. They will continue to demand oil and other commodities at an ever increasing rate of consumption.

We have been duped into believing that “Speculators” are to blame for higher prices… if South West Airlines is a speculator then you are right… but the reality is that it is GLOBAL DEMAND that pays these exorbitant prices we are seeing… and as I said before… there is NO GOING BACK.

IF we produce more oil it will only keep up with the demand worldwide. While it may make us less dependent on oil for our own needs the prices we will pay in the USA will be based upon WORLD PRICES… not our domestic (USA) production. To believe otherwise is just foolish. Additionally, currently we are importing only about 30 percent of our domestic needs.

We are not entitled to lower fuel prices… it is what it is and we will not sell for less than the world price unless we become a socialist society and subsidize our oil… and that will never happen… or at least I hope we will never become a socialist country. Our sense of entitlement is what is causing a great many problems for us in this country today… and it needs to be put into proper perspective.

Many Americans want to know why China or India Consumption of oil is hurting us here… it is simply business…. I business you do not want to hear about but at least need to understand….The companies that drill for oil are not federal Government Oil Companies… they are in the business to make money… the basic model of Business is that thing called supply and demand… Because I drill and pump crude oil in the USA does not mean that I am obligated by any law to sell it in the USA… as a businessman when I get something out of the ground I can sell it to the highest bidder…. If the USA does not want my product but someone in another country wants it… then I am entitles to sell it to any country (with few exception) I want to … THAT IS BUSINESS. To expect that I should sell it to you at any cheaper price is unreasonable… and bad business… and since these companies that do pump crude oil have other people who own stock (real ownership) of their companies… then they have a legal (fiduciary) obligation to maximize profits for their owners… remember again… we are NOT a socialist Country. Additionally to punish me for selling at the market price with a windfall profits tax is unreasonable… you may not like my profits… but they are legitimate and are mine… additionally I will increase prices to compensate for the “surcharge” tax on my profits.

If we really want Oil Companies to become energy companies then we need to develop incentives to foster the Oil Companies to become “Energy Companies” release in the Fall of 2008….

As I said you did not want to hear that… but those are the basic facts of life today, as we know them! Painful is it not?? Yet this has been the standard model of capitalism for hundreds of years and is not going to change anytime soon.

The same is true of cheap food and household energy use and even in other commodities like gold and Steel and copper (used in your wiring I might add) (I will address health care in another post… and you will NOT like what I have to tell you there either).

The ONLY way of getting a better price is to strengthen the dollar… but our past practices in our country have caught up with us and now we have financial troubles with Credit availability (after years of easy credit) and even with interest rates low we are not able to get the benefits of those cheap rates. Yet is we raise interest rates to fight the higher costs (also known as inflation) we will cause greater harm to the overall economy… the government and the Federal Reserve are in quite a conundrum and there is no quick fix to this problem of a stringer dollar… so do NOT anticipate things getting better quickly.

As bad as things are now they will get better based upon what has already happened… and I fear for many Americans with the Winter Heating Season just ahead (yes we are actually almost there and it is only the beginning of summer) as any American who drives to work and makes less than 40,000 per year per household will find themselves financially in the red (to me this is the new Poverty level in the USA). Elderly Americans on fixed incomes will suffer the most and the Cost of Living adjustments are not accurately reflection the actual increase of cost on the average family… and how can they when the supposed US Index for the Average hourly wage is over 17 dollars an hour…. That shows how skewed the Inflation indexes are by the number of “high wage” earners there are in this country… it is, simply, out of control.

In a future post I will give the bad news … I NOW expect oil to reach 250 dollars a barrel by sometime in 2010… unless the dollar gets better fast…. However with the choices for president and the policies I see coming down the road… that may not be able to be done (remember the discussion on Fiscal and Monetary policy and the effects). Hence 5 dollar a gallon gas will be cheap by comparison…

Corn Prices :

When we find other uses for Commodities outside the normal and regular use we create a demand for additional supply of that commodity. Corn, however, has had a double whammy effect. Yes I am talking first about Global Demand… Most of us think of corn as a food product for our table in many different forms…. Many of us forget that beef and chicken and even pork is raised for slaughter through the use of “feed corn” for them to consume to get these products…. Now also remember that farmers have limited amount of land to use… they also want to get the most out of every acre of land they farm… and currently feed corn is a great provider of revenue.

AS we increased the standard of living for impoverished countries like India and China… they consumption patters changed…. Meaning they now eat more of the Meats I described above…. Those meats also require the feed corn to produce. …Hence demand for feed corn went up and farmers produced more feed corn as a result.

The second whammy was the production (and subsidy by our government) of Ethanol. This non-food use for Corn drove the demand beyond the normal supply and demand curve and as we have seen dramatically increased prices… while the effectiveness of using Ethanol is being debated and alternatives are being developed this demand will not come down and prices will remain high.

What has surprised me about this is, that it was not expected by so many people…. Using a food in a way that is not a food product would naturally increase the demand for that product. As a note…. using Sugar Cane for ethanol will also raise food prices… yet the government may be more willing to do this because of the health consequences of sugar (yes gaining weight).

Corn prices are a direct result of GLOBAL DEMAND and the traditional supply and demand pricing but in a global context.

Energy Costs:

Generally we think of energy as the gasoline we put into our cars. This is true but we consume electricity in ever greater quantities then ever before. Heating, Air-conditioning, lighting TV’s Computers… ALL requiring Energy…. Energy is derived from many sources… Nuclear is being touted as a future provider of energy to wean us off of fossil fuels… but the COST to produce which is said to be low… will NOT reflect in lower prices to the Consumer…. The pricing index will show that they will sell this energy at lose to the same price as Coal or Diesel or natural gas plants… this seems to be the case with Hydro electric now. OLD power plants, are increasing prices, because of consumption, they are not lowering them. Yes the prices of oil and Coal have a lot to do with the international (Global) demand… and the prices have been going up dramatically…. So while we like to think we are better off with “alternative Fuels” and Alternative generation facilities” we are kidding ourselves if we think that will reduce our costs by very much at all… Making electricity… the production of power is a business and as such they obligation is to get the highest price for the product as possible. WE are not entitled to lower power costs!

Electricity is a produced commodity from a natural resource commodity…. At least for now.

Post #3 will be about credit, housing prices and maybe the stock market and Global Currencies

If you have been reading these posts… I will eventually get to the part where I make recommendations for the future… but I still need to explain more about where are are and how we got here.

Craig Eisele

Craig’s Diatribe on the USA and Global Economy (# 1)

June 6, 2008

This blog entry is to try and express my viewpoints on the current state of the USA Economy, my predictions for the future and how we are no longer a localized economy but now are part of a GLOBAL economy. It is part one of a series.

Economic models are nothing more than a theory of how things work… while those theories have been fairly accurate on the last 2 or 3, or even 4 decades our understanding of the way in which the USA economy (as well as the global economy), works is in need of revision.

The USA used to be the master of its own destiny… no more!!!

Where to begin?? This could be a complicated entry and I do not want you the reader (especially if you are a novice) to get lost…. So here I go….

Americans, for the most part, have lost their direction over the last 15 or 20 years…. I cannot and will not blame the politicians… although they should share some of the blame… but we as individuals, need to accept responsibility for where we are today (at least mostly). What do I mean by this?? Well we became a society that never foresaw that our spending (consumption) patters were too great. We felt wealthy and even entitled to an ever increasing and higher standard of living. We disregarded the warnings of our grandparents and great parents who lived through the “Great Depression” years.

We did not save! We used our equity on our homes for newer cars, the latest technologies, and what we determined to me our “God Given right” to a vacation and other rewards for working so hard. We failed to save and invest wisely and gambled on stocks and the future value of our homes to be our savior in the years ahead. We thought about the future in lose terms but never really took the risk too seriously. We always believed that our life style would never be reduced but would continue to rise. WELL … If you still believe that you are in for a great shock… as our quality of life and our life style is never going to be the same. We are no longer masters of our own destiny and must now participate in a global society…. And these facts, my friends (and foes) are the mere facts of life today, which we have not yet accepted.

HOW DID WE GET TOM THIS POINT???

That answer is very complicated…. But lets examine some basics:

1 Commodities: There are two types of Commodities. One that we basically get from the earth in raw form and then convert to materials we use in our daily life…. Oil, Coal, Water, Natural Gas, Metals etc…. then there are those the we grow and raise… food stuffs primarily… the most basic being things like corn, wheat and rice…. Basics in almost every countries diet.

Commodities cost money and energy to produce… when we start importing and exporting those commodities then we have a currency exchange…. One country’s money in exchange for another’s for the buying and selling of those commodities. These “prices get higher the more “value” we add to each commodity…. For instance…. Refining oil into lubricants or heating oil and even more personal into plastics and Synthetic fabrics like Polyester and rayon etc.

We add even more value when we change those plastics into use for appliances, electronics, automobiles and so on… combining commodities to make products that end up in homes and offices, and to a lesser extent in factories where they are used to make “end user” products

Simply we as the consumer are at the end of the “value added” chain of events and must pay the final price ….. This does not include the “disposal Price” when we have to get rid of our “old things”.

REMEMBER: Supply and Demand economics is real… but NOT as important in the United States Economy alone… meaning that the Supply and Demand pricing models are now based on World Wide Demand and not just what is demanded in the USA… we ARE a global society now.

The “global economy” comes into play when we realized that much greater profits could be had by using another countries labor to add the value. Clothing was one of the first things that was “outsourced” and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America: fought hard to keep their jobs from going overseas… but obviously they were no supported very well in their protests.

We then subjected ourselves to the mandates of the WTO (World trade Organization) and had to negotiate trade agreements with various countries to keep the balance of trade in some order. However by doing this we lost more control over our destiny then anyone would imagine even to this day. Simply we cannot protect our own companies or workers that function in the USA because it is now against international law that WE agreed to (OK… this blame goes to the Politicians).

One needs to look only at the stocks that did well the last 6 to 9 months and see that MOST of their profits came from overseas…. More on how this is possible later….

Our thirst for MORE PROFITS, and the false belief that what was good for Wall Street was good for America is seriously being challenged… but it is to late to unwind the situation we now find ourselves… George Sorros calls for a new paradigm… maybe that is where we are already and have now acknowledged it… or at least told the average American.

Now the pressure has been on the Federal Reserve and the US Government to make things better… but they really cannot, and we need to stop thinking they can. These institutions CAN however reduce the amount of FUTURE pain that the average American is feeling.

There is a concern that the pain is now gone from “Wall Street” to “Main Street” with the focus on BUSINESS… but most Americans are now feeing it on “MY STREET” something that is being ignored. Business seems to be what we are most interested in, and for that the average person will continue to bear the brunt of this economic condition we are in… because … if you read above… the CONSUMER is the one who is basically the END USER… WE pay the final price for this.

OK… enough of the basic economics lesson for toady…. Later I will write about where we are and the CURRENT economic Condition that ALL of us need to be aware of… not the HYPE that the TV and other media wants us to see and hear… but realities

After that I will write on what we can do for the FUTURE… how we can survive… not thrive… in the downturn that is here and will continue for some time…. Practice advice that IF I AM WRONG… will never hurt you but only make you better off in the future.

Oil Prices. The Dollar value in the world, an Energy and commodity prices will be discussed. I know people are looking at the stock market after what happened on Friday June 6…. And especially they are looking at OIL PRICES… and there is a lot of attempts to LAY BLAME…. And to say it is speculation… our congress has tried to find a “culprit” to blame… and I firmly believe it is not the “Speculators” it is really because we are in a “GLOBAL ECONOMY” that these prices are raising…. That is why I have decided to write this post… so the average person will understand What has happened, what is going on and Where we are going ….. it is very important to knowing what to do in the future and to see how we are not in control of our destiny as we have been in the past and how we are really a global society now … whether we like it or not… and there is no turning back!!!

Post note: I know that this blog has been used for my promotion of Africa Development…. I am still working on these as well… I have been silent for some time for a variety of reasons… but I have not stopped working on these projects

I have also decide that now that BOTH parties have selected their nomine for President of the United Staes… NEITHER of which can make our lives like they were…. that the time was right to discuss our economy .

Additionally I was going to discuss the Housing Crisis in America and the weakening dollar and what the Federal reserves actions have been….but I do what to do that later… but please remember that the Federal Reserve is in charge of MONETARY POLICY… meaning the banking and Interest rates and to control the growth of our economy . There is considerable discussion taking place as to the Bear Sterns intervention by the FED and if is was a way to intervene in the Financial markets…. which was NOT disctated by their mandate from Congress… they are to be independent politically… but they a have limited authority… CONGRESS and the Executive Branch of Government has the responsibility for FISCAL Policy.. that means raising or lowering taxes and the borrowing of money to finance the government operations.. they can help or hurt the economy of the USA in general by the amount of money and the number of :jobs” they create within government. Sometimes those policies may appear to have a socialistic view point… but that is a discussion for another time…. just remember to keep the FED (Federal Reserve) and the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT as two distinct entities that try to work together and yet should never be able to influence each other in keeping the economy stable… also more on interest rates and why Mortgages are so hard to get today in a later post.

For the accuracy of my predictions I invite you to read my other posts on the US Economy at

https://craigeisele.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/my-predictions-for-2008-for-the-us-economy/

and

https://craigeisele.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/more-2008-predictions-from-craig-eisele/

EU Stands to Increase Market Share in Africa With EPAs

EU Stands to Increase Market Share in Africa With EPAs

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
NEWS
26 January 2008
Posted to the web 26 January 2008

By Julio Godoy
Paris
While the real impact of the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) on the economies of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries will be “small”, the pace of negotiations and of the liberalisation of their markets is too fast and will damage their economies, according to numerous French economists and development experts.

“The main problem with the EPAs is that the European Union wants to go too fast with the negotiations, too fast with the regional integration in the ACP group, and too fast with the market liberalisation in there,” says Bénédicte Hermelin, research director at GRET, a Paris-based umbrella organisation of international cooperation groups.

The EPAs, supposed to take effect as of January 1, 2008, propose to create a free trade area between Europe and the 79 ACP signatories of the Lomé Convention. The convention goes back to the 1970s.

EPAs are part of the Cotonou agreement — a much wider agreement signed between the European Union (EU) and the ACP countries in June 2000 in the capital of Benin. It covers aid, trade and political cooperation between the two groups of countries.

The Cotonou agreement replaced the Lomé convention, which gave ACP countries special access to sell certain products in European markets.

EU officials defend the EPAs as trade and development tools, as Peter Mandelson, EU commissioner for trade, has put it. In a speech on January 20, 2005, Mandelson described the EPAs as “potentially a crucial, hugely positive contribution that Europe can and must make to trade and development” in Africa.

The EPAs’ “purpose is the successful integration of the ACP economies in the global economy — and by that I mean putting the ACP on a ladder of prosperity that ends the grinding poverty which is the daily experience of so many ACP citizens,” Mandelson said.

But numerous ACP governments and European non-governmental organisations oppose the EPAs, for they consider them an instrument of “European economic neo-colonialism”, which would destroy these low developed economies by forcing ACP countries to open their markets to subsidized agricultural goods from Europe.

However, says Hermelin, at least regarding agriculture, “for Africa, the imports of poultry from Brazil are more dangerous than those from Europe”. Similarly, she says, Africa will need to import milk from Europe “still for a long time, until its milk production can satisfy the local demand”.

Other experts believe that the EPAs will strengthen Europe’s trade position in Africa at the cost of inter-Africa trade.

“If African coastal countries, such as Senegal, completely open their markets to European agricultural products, then the Saharan countries producing livestock will lose their market shares in those neighbouring countries,” Benoit Faivre-Dupaigre, an economics researcher at the French Institute for Research on Development, told IPS.

Like Hermelin, Faivre-Dupaigre denounced the pace of negotiations on the EPAs imposed by the EU. “This fast-track liberalisation contradicts the experience of industrialized countries, which needed decades to build up their domestic markets before they opened them up to international competitors,” he said.

According to a study by the Paris-based Research Centre in International Economics (CEPII, after its French name), the impact of EPAs on ACP economies would be negative, if small.

On the one hand, the liberalisation of trade with the EU would represent a 22 percent growth of imports from Europe. But, if 20 percent of these new imports are blocked by the “sensitive products” clause, that growth would fall to 16 percent, representing some 3.5 billion euros in new imports from Europe.

However, these new imports from Europe would substitute goods the ACP countries presently bring in from the U.S., Brazil, China, Japan and other countries, thus reducing the new trade debit balance for the ACP countries to 1.8 billion euros.

As the CEPII notes, given that the ACP countries imported a total of 102 billion euros in goods and services in 2005, that new deficit is insignificant.

More important is the ACP custom revenues loss due to EPAs, as estimated by the CEPII. These losses could go up 3 billion euros per year for the ACP countries, with individual impacts going on from five to 35 percent of the state budget.

In the cases of the poorest countries, such losses can be of enormous importance for states almost deprived of income, notes the CEPII.

Such data lead Roger Blein, French development advisor for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS, a regional group of fifteen West African countries), to believe that “even if the impact of the EPAs would be modest, it is clear that the EU is trying to expand its market share in the ACP countries.

“When the European Commission says that Europe does not have any economic interest in the EPAs negotiations, it is lying,” Blein added.

In general, French critics of the EPAs recall that while the EU farmers do enjoy of massive subsidies — some 50 billion euros in 2005 — small agricultural producers in the ACP do not.

The French group ATTAC, for instance, argues that these subsidies for European agricultural goods already encourage overproduction and, if added to so-called free trade agreements such as the EPAs, will also promote export dumping.

This will lead to the destruction of livelihoods in developing countries, representing a real and palpable menace for those countries’ “food sovereignty”.

ATTAC stands for Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens and opposes neoliberal globalisation in general, from the World Trade Organisation to the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In a position paper published last December, ATTAC recalls that the production of tomatoes in Ghana was affected by the structural adjustment programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s and 1990s. “The import of tomatoes skyrocketed, from 3,600 tones to 24,000 tones,” ATTAC says in its paper.

This growth in imports led to “weakening of the Ghanaian farmers, traders and the food processing industry in the country”. EPAs would launch a similar process in the whole of Africa, ATTAC claims.

World Leaders Issue Call to Action on Millennium Development Goals

Personally, I believe this (article listed below)is too little too late… and the basic NEEDS of Africa to meet and even exceed these goals are not congruent with the basic need for infrastructure like a drivable road!! 

World Leaders Issue Call to Action on Millennium Development Goals

World Economic Forum (Geneva)
PRESS RELEASE
28 January 2008
Posted to the web 28 January 2008
Davos
World leaders have issued a joint statement at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos vowing to make 2008 a turning point in the fight against poverty.

The world is facing a “development emergency”, they said. “We pledge to work together to help the world get back on track to meet the MDGs.”

Leaders spearheading the call to action include Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General, United Nations, New York; Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, President of Nigeria; Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum; William H. Gates III, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, USA; Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum; Bono, Musician, DATA (DEBT, AIDS, TRADE, AFRICA), United Kingdom; and John T. Chambers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cisco, USA.

“We are here to say one thing loud and clear: Not on our watch!” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“I speak to those who are most vulnerable to climate change and those who suffer the most grinding poverty. Let 2008 be the year of the bottom billion,” he said.

“We all agree that it is time to move from promise to performance …. Let us put our promises back on track for all the world’s children,” said Queen Rania.

“This is a moral compact, not a legal contract. To take a concrete step forward, we must take this from a moral compact to legally binding contracts,” Bono told a packed press conference. “Thanks to African leadership and debt cancellation, 29 million children are now in school,” he said.

“For us in Africa, the achievement of the MDGs is our sacred duty,” said Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. “One of the major challenges in Africa is the infrastructure gap that is one of the key enablers of the achievement of the MDGs. I welcome this initiative from the global community.”

“It is right that, here in Davos, we tell the truth that there is a development emergency and that we must summon everyone in a call to action to take measures to meet the MDGs by 2015,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

“This [call to action] fits in with the idea of creative capitalism,” said Gates. “We can make more progress and it is important to be part of this endeavour,” he said. “I want to challenge the business community” to join the renewed efforts of governments and NGOs, said Chambers. “It’s the power of collaborative innovation that makes a difference,” he said.

The joint statement said:

“At the Millennium Summit in 2000 the international community – every world leader, every international body, almost every country – vowed to spare no effort to achieve the seven key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Halfway to 2015 we have made some vital progress:

• 3 million more children survive every year
• 2 million people now receive AIDs treatment
• There are 41 million more children in school
• 2 million lives are saved every year by immunization
• Polio, leprosy and neonatal tetanus are on the verge of elimination
• African economies have been growing at 6% for the past three years, and are set to grow faster in the years ahead

This progress inspires us all to do more. We know we can make a difference. But we still face an enormous challenge – a development emergency:

• 72 million children are still not in school and many who are receive a very poor quality education.Half of the developing world lack basic sanitation.
• If current trends continue, the world is likely to miss the MDG sanitation target by almost 600 million people.
• Over half a million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
• Over 33 million people are living with HIV, and more than 1 million people die of malaria every year, including one child every 30 seconds.
• 980 million people still live on less than US$ 1 a day.

So without an extraordinary effort we will fail to achieve the MDGs. 2008 is a critical year. If we don’t begin to get back on track we will fail. Today in Davos we – the undersigned – commit to work to make 2008 a turning point in the fight against poverty. We are pleased to join the 19 countries and 21 private sector companies that are now signed up to the MDG Call to Action. And we pledge to work together to help the world get back on track to meet the MDGs.

We know we will only succeed if governments, the private sector, faith groups, civil society and NGOs work together.

And to catalyse, inspire and focus activity within this broad coalition – and to measure progress towards the 2015 pledges – today we agree that the world community should set some 2010 milestones towards our 2015 goals, including:

• 75 million more people lifted out of extreme poverty in Africa
• 25 million more children in school
• 4 million more children’s lives saved
• 35 million more births need to be attended by skilled health personnel between now and 2010
• 70 million more people given improved access to water

A series of international meetings throughout 2008 will identify what more we all need to do to meet these goals and agree concrete action plans:

• In the spring, the private sector will meet and announce new measures to help achieve the MDGs.
• In June, European leaders will set out what more the EU can do to accelerate progress towards the MDGs.
• In July, the Japan G8 Summit will focus on development and climate change.
• In September, at the UN – and for the first time ever – governments, businesses, civil society organizations, NGOs and faith groups will all convene to mark the halfway point to the MDGs, take stock of progress and agree additional steps the international community will take to accelerate action.
• And the Italians have agreed to take this forward into 2008 with their G8.
• The world is witnessing a development emergency, and we need a worldwide effort to get back on track to meet the MDGs. We commit to join and redouble our efforts.”

More than 2,500 participants from 88 countries are in Davos, Switzerland, including 27 heads of state or government, 113 cabinet ministers, along with religious leaders, media leaders and heads of non-governmental organizations. Around 60% of the participants are business leaders drawn principally from the Forum’s members – 1,000 of the foremost companies from around the world and across all economic sectors.

Removal of Trade Tariffs Not Solution for Continent

Removal of Trade Tariffs Not Solution for Continent

New Vision (Kampala)
OPINION
28 January 2008
Posted to the web 29 January 2008

By John Ssempebwa
Kampala
REFERENCE is made to the article titled “African Governments Should Remove Trade Tariffs”, published in The New Vision, January 9. Removing trade tariffs is no solution to Africa’s problems; it cuts government revenue, worsens trade deficits and poverty. In May 2007, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) collected sh228b of which sh122b was from imports.

Without import duties levied, especially on finished goods that are also produced in Uganda and ostentatious goods, how will government fund roads, hospitals, drugs and arms without donors?

Whereas Europe can depend on indirect domestic taxes levied on red light districts, casinos, tobacco and alcohol, Uganda cannot remove import duties because its per capita income is less than $400 meaning that less than 1% of all Ugandans have entered a casino.

Uganda has an increasing trade deficit of sh$1.4b. Trade deficits cause massive lay offs as imported goods subject domestically produced goods to competition, forcing sub-optimal capacity utilisation and laying off workers.

This malignant tumour in the Ugandan economy is the reason why impressive growth rates have not translated into better welfare for many Ugandans (Gross Domestic Product is an inverse function of the trade deficit).

Removal of import duties will encourage consumption of imports, worsen the trade deficit, jobs will be lost and markets for agro produce will dwindle. Poverty will worsen.

Before import duty is removed, consumers should have sufficient purchasing power to spend and pay indirect taxes without the consumer feeling the tax burden. This requires industrialisation. In fact, Europe’s industrial development was shaped by fierce protectionism called “Fortress Europe” during which Britain levied an average tariff of 32%, France developed its current agricultural protective system, Bismarck dumped the German Free Trade Policy and average industrial tariffs stood at 19% in Europe.

More so, Intra-African trade liberalisation needs a cautious approach since the EU has already signed free trade areas with leading African economies such as South Africa and Egypt.

Removing tariffs on goods from South Africa in the absence of appropriate rules of origin means offering the EU duty free market access to Uganda yet “EU” has no offensive trade interests in Uganda. Why offer a lift to a rich man who has several Rolls Royces?

The principle of asymmetry has to come into play when discussing removal of trade tariffs and any other trade controls in Africa. Some countries are at higher levels of development because of advantages bestowed upon them by European colonial masters. Full and immediate liberalisation of trade with such countries can only mean jobs lost in Uganda.

In lieu of liberalising Africa’s trade, if the EU is interested in enabling Africa to benefit from world trade, the EU must compensate Africa for the damaging effects of liberalisation implied in the Economic Partnership Agreements.

Africa’s true allies will not be those who impose liberalisation but those who help Africa adjust to the liberalisation by solving its supply side constraints, for example, building the big dam in neighbouring Congo (The dam could reduce the cost of power in Central and Eastern Africa by 50%), building an alternative route for Uganda’s imports through Tanzania.

These projects have been identified by Africa and are contained in the development matrix of the Economic Partnership Agreements Negotiations.

It is unfortunate that the EU agrees to the development matrix but hates a detailed one that identifies the costs and exact projects. Africa seems to know its problems better now. Liberalisation is surely not the solution to our problems.

The writer is the Director of Trade at the Private Sector Foundation