There is general agreement that the Doha round of the WTO talks has collapsed, to no great surprise and, no doubt, to the delight of Sarkozy and the other protectionist tendencies which are happy to see the process of "globalisation" brought to a halt.

The proximate cause is a dispute principally between the US and India - which also included Indonesia and China - over a safeguard mechanism to protect farmers in developing states from agricultural imports.

View full article here

of the globalization critics. They dislike trade agreements because the result is the free exchange of goods and services. To the left, there is no free exchange of anything, all is coercion and exploitation. So to then open up a trade system to freer trade is to open it up to further coercion and exploitation by the powerful, whoever they are, of the weak, whoever the left defines.

Unfortunately, the moderate and right, when the communists just over the horizon and countries were strangling on state-control, were big on free trade. Since then have lost their foundation and senses. What exactly has the government-careerist McCain said about a free trade agreements? Do you think he even knows, or cares? And noone asks the social activist and Senator Obama what he thinks of free trade, the engine of prosperity for millions is naturally beyond his experience.

I'm sure that integrationists would say we have greater influence being in a large trade block than speaking on our own behalf, when faced with opponents like India and the US.

And that viewpoint is part of the problem. Surely they are competitors in the ecologiocal sense?
Free marketeers would say leave well alone and like the plains of Africa an ecosystem will develop of great diversity including niches (markets) that no regulator could have envisioned. Farmed salmon can't survive in the wild, nor can industries that live by regulation, so their governments have to be confrontational.

Britain would be better off if it acted unilaterally and opened up to full free trade.

See Mises for an exposition of the theory.

Really, I am glad that the Doha trade round has collapsed. If the EU wants to open trade, it should just stop subsidizing farmers by removing subsidies, import tariffs and production regulations. That other countries might not follow suit, is no justification for a policy that is inherently unjust.

Good thing the French farmers didn't hear you say that, there'd be tons of turnips, tomatoes, potatoes and tractors turning up in all the most unlikely places.