Rethinking Humanitarianism | More trade; less aid?

Clip, World Trade Organization, Sept 2022

I believe it is indispensable from both an economic and a political perspective that the World Trade Organisation should have the role that is foreseen for it. Without that, the world into which we would be rapidly moving, would be a divided world of conflicting blocks and countries with spheres of influence seeking the type of advantage over each other that has in the past led to wars and conflict.

Heba Aly:

The globalisation of trade markets and establishment of the World Trade Organization were meant to lead to an era of peace and prosperity. And a fair playing field for all nations to trade equally. 

But shortly after its creation, the WTO was already the target of mass protests by environmentalists, labour rights groups and others who argued globalisation was harming the most vulnerable.

Seattle Protests, September 2019

The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching, the whole world is watching…

Aly:

Alongside this protest by American activists was a broader international critique: that while global trade was touted as a tool to help lift developing countries out of poverty, its rules often led to the opposite result.

Trade policies favouring powerful countries and multinational corporations left poor countries economically vulnerable and - when hit with disasters and crises - in need of international aid. 

This reality has given rise to a simple idea: Trade not Aid. The argument goes: countries wouldn’t need aid if they were able to trade fairly. 

Clip, McKinsey, May 2017

So governments sign up to the idea of trade being a good idea and globalisation is fantastic. But because they're trying to protect their local farmers for example, they decide to impose tariffs against, for argument's sake - take your pick of an emerging market country. The problem is as a substitute for the lost trade revenues to those poor countries, many international voices decided that the best way to sort of bridge that gap was to give these countries aid.

Aly:

So what would more equitable trade policies look like? And are they achievable at a time when countries are turning to protectionism and self-interest? 

From Geneva, Switzerland, this is Rethinking Humanitarianism, a production of The New Humanitarian. I’m your host, Heba Aly. 

When Ngozi Okonji-Iweala was appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization in 2021, she was the first African - and the first woman - to hold that position. And she vowed to make trade a tool to address inequality. 

Clip, World Economic Forum, Jan 2022

This is a chance for us - in this diversification and going global - to integrate those countries and areas and parts of the world, or even parts of a country that have been left behind not included in the benefits of globalisation. So relocating or diversifying your manufacturing sites to other countries in the developing world as you seem to be doing part, is a good thing. We see shifts to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and so on in our data. And I call it a way of re-globalizing and using this globalisation and supply chain to solve some of the inequality problems.

Aly:

Is that vision possible? How can countries with weaker economies truly benefit from trade? And would that allow them to be less dependent on aid? 

To help us answer these questions, we are joined today by Gyude Moore, the former Liberian Minister of Public Works and now a senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development. He joins us from Washington D.C. Hi Gyude.

Guyde Moore:

Hi, thanks for having me.

Aly:

Nice to have you here. And Nick Dearden is the Director of Global Justice Now, a UK-based organisation that campaigns on global trade issues. Nick joins us from London. Welcome.

Nick Dearden:

Thank you.

Aly:

Nick, I want to start with you, because as I mentioned, liberalised trade is often promoted as a tool to lift people out of poverty. But we've seen, historically, that free trade agreements have often had the opposite effect. So walk us through how current trade rules affect poor and developing countries.

Dearden:

I think it's really important to say at the outset, trade can be an important force that helps lift countries out of poverty and helps them develop. But it depends on what term trade is done. And there's a huge difference between trading and the kind of free trade ideology that we’ve seen embedded in trade rules from the mid-90s onwards. So, there was a huge change in the middle of the 1990s, with the formation of the World Trade Organization, that really changed the way that trade happened. Up to that point, of course there'd been a lot of trade happening around the world, tariffs were actually fairly low coming out of the Second World War. But countries traded to the extent that they saw it was good for meeting full employment, or it was going to be good for their development. So trade was a means to an end. And I think what happened with the formation of the WTO is: that was turned on its head. And trade became the end in itself. So the idea was, no matter what the consequences, lower tariffs, engage in more free trade, because ideologically, it became a certainty that that was going to be good for you. And that was a really big change. And the World Trade Organization also had a sanctions mechanism, which meant that effectively, it can enforce its will, it can enforce these laws on countries, whereas beforehand, there have been lots of loopholes for countries, particularly countries of the Global South, they’d been able to do things differently if they felt the need to do so. That all became very, very different in the mid-90s. And I think the second thing, which is important to remember about this period, is trade became all encompassing. It became about far more than I sell you coffee, and you sell me fabric. It became about a whole range of global economic rules that up to that point, we've not thought of as trade rules before. There I’m thinking about things like intellectual property, which I know you discussed in your previous show, but particularly around medicines, and who has the right to use certain intellectual property. It’s about things like the regulation of services, and it’s about things like capital investment and the protection of capital investment. A whole range of other issues were put on the table that went far beyond trade per se. And I believe, made a huge difference to the ability of countries to be able to protect their own populations and develop in the way that they saw fit.

Aly: 

So could you walk me through that last bit? How did it then affect the ability of populations to take care of their own people, respond to crises, etc? What is it about that new trade architecture that developed, as you've described, that was harmful?

Dearden:

Most countries that have developed into what we call advanced economies, be it the UK, the US, or any European country, South Korea, Taiwan, they’ve all done that by basically finding out how other countries were doing things, taking the skills and technology, and just doing it themselves, right? They didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. And in the case of China, for example, that often meant literally taking stuff apart, working out how it was made and producing it themselves. They were able to develop technologically based upon what was happening elsewhere in the world. And that was extremely beneficial for them. Under WTO rules, for example, the TRIPS agreement that protects that intellectual property, and says every country on earth must have the same intellectual property standards more or less as the United States, they’re no longer able to do that. That property is heavily protected. And we saw what that meant, very, very clearly, in the pandemic, where a bunch of companies based in the West, were able to sit on intellectual property that prevented other countries from using that know how, and that was a problem, because it meant we couldn't produce the amount of COVID vaccines we needed. But actually, it's a much bigger problem, because it means that all sorts of countries are now locked out of mRNA technology, which could be really important for fighting a whole host of diseases. This is really at the heart of development, you know, it’s really at the heart of how countries are able to promote their people’s health. And actually, what they’re told to do under modern trade deals, is put the supposed property and profits of multinational corporations ahead of the healthcare of their people.

Aly: 

That's a very clear and timely example. I want to come to you, Gyude, because you, in your own way, lived through the impact of trade policies when you worked in government in Liberia after the Civil War that ended in 2003. And since then, Liberia has received more than $2.4 billion from the US government alone, to rebuild the country. And so I’m curious: as you were working to recover from the war and get the economy back on track, how did trade agreements help or hurt you in that process?

Moore:

Why did we get to a point where trade itself became almost ideological? You have to remember that in 1989, capitalism wins, the Berlin wall comes down, and the economies that were more liberal, the economies that were trading more won, supposedly, right against the communism. And so then it became this thing that if a country is going to be wealthy, it has to go this past sort of something that was simply an idea took on a life of its own. And so we get go down this path of liberalization. Liberia, like most African countries, at least in the tropics, are predominantly dependent on raw materials. First of all, colonialism itself was driven by this need to get access to resources at source, right? And so the colonies were largely meant to provide natural resources that would be then taken from the periphery and sent to the centre. When we become independent, that pattern of trade doesn’t change. Most of what we export are unprocessed goods – timber, or iron ore, maybe some diamonds. But generally, either forest products, agricultural products, like rubber, or mineral products. Those are the things that we exported. And that’s a good thing because out of that exchange, we’re able to get resources to pay for the domestic needs that we have. The difficulty for countries in our position is that the terms of trade have not changed for a long time. When we do an exchange, I give you something of a certain value, you give me something in return of a certain value. What's happened for countries in our position is that for the last 50 years, the value of what we have been able to give has diminished. While the value of what we get in return has gone up. So for example, Nigeria, will export crude oil and import jet fuel, or gasoline. The finished and processed product is significantly more expensive than the unprocessed product. And so over time, the terms of trade have worsened for us in that position. And what countries in my position, whether it’s Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, what we’ve wanted to do is to move up the value chain. As we slowly move up the value chain, what we get in exchange for the goods we give now is higher. Which comes back to your question. The more value we get out of our exchanges, the more resources we have to take care of our needs, reducing our need for aid, right? It means that in times of crisis, we are way more resilient, because we get more out of that. So historically, even in instances where the rich countries have said, yeah, you can export anything that you want to export to us, they began to escalate tariffs, the more value you add to that product. So if you're going to send us just cocoa beans, that’s great. But if you convert the cocoa beans to cocoa powder, or cocoa paste, tariffs go up. Because now you're beginning to add value. There’s a report that came out last year from UNCTAD that showed 45 out of 54 economies in Africa still depend on commodities – unprocessed raw materials – for more than 60% of their exports. So it means that, the composition of the basket, the things that we export, there’s really no diversity. And because of that, it makes us exposed to any shock, whether it’s Russia invading Ukraine, or it’s COVID, as soon as the shocks happen, because we don’t have the resilience, we stand in need of aid.

Aly:  

I want to pick up on that, because you’re pointing to what it is that countries like yours are in a position to export. But there’s also the angle of the kind of exploitation that’s happening, or the extractiveness in the process that you’ve just described. And earlier this season, we heard actually from a Somali-American activist and aid worker, Degan Ali, who said, African countries, as you have just said, wouldn't need aid if they were allowed to trade at the same level as other countries:

Degan Ali, Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, October 2022

There is no real intent and desire to lift people out of poverty in the Global South and make these countries sovereign, independent, equal members of the global trade system. So I’ll give you a good example.

Why is it that the largest producers of cocoa in the world are in Africa, but at the same time, tell me when was the last time anybody ate a chocolate bar from Ghana? I've never had a chocolate bar from Ghana. I've never seen a chocolate bar from Ghana being sold in the US or Europe. But the cocoa is taken, extracted from West Africa, taken to Europe, and rebranded as Swiss chocolate, or Dutch chocolate. And they are the ones who have this reputation of having premiere chocolate, the best chocolate in the world. 

So, this is an example of how the trade policies through the arms of the World Bank and the IMF in terms of financing are inhibiting the growth of these countries. So, we need to move from a situation of extracting rubber from Africa and allowing Africans to actually produce tyres, and having factories that produce tyres. That is what’s going to lift people out of poverty. China has not been successful in lifting millions and millions and millions of people out of poverty in the past 25 years through a UNICEF or UNDP project. They have lifted people out of poverty through industrialisation. But the opportunity to industrialise and trade fairly has not been given to Africa.

Aly:  

For Liberia, that is also a country exporting more commodities than finished products, to what extent that has been a process of extraction to your mind and not just a question of your capacity to export?

Moore: 

Most times, we sign a long term agreement with a company that extracts the natural resource, and they pay royalties to us. The mother company would be in the UK. And the company comes to Liberia and creates a Liberian subsidiary of the mother company, and signs a long-term agreement and offtake agreement with its mother company. When it extracts the ore or the natural resource from the country, it sells to its mother company at an artificially depressed price. Because the taxes and royalties they pay is based on how low or how high, they sold whatever they sold. And so by selling to the mother company at a depressed price, it means what they have to pay in taxes to us is significantly low. The mother company, of course, is free to sell it at the regular price in the world market. So in the process of the exchange, they become significantly wealthier, and we don’t. I think that's one of the reasons. The second thing is, when you try to add value to cocoa, then you face non-tariff barriers. Non-tariff barriers would be like health related things. For example, the EU would say for cocoa to come, for it to be processed and brought into the EU, these are the specifications, sometimes the imposition of the specifications, are outside the means of many developing countries to be able to do. So it's easier to just send the beans, which are very cheap, than to actually add anything to it. There was a report that came out, I think in 2019, that showed that $1 trillion worth of natural resources - the rights to those resources - were for companies that are registered in the UK. The resources are in Africa, but the people with the rights to extract and sell them were listed in the UK. So even out of that exchange, most of the value accrues to places outside of Africa. So it goes back to the points that you said: if trade were allowed to happen in a fairer way, the need for aid would significantly diminish in the poorest countries in the world. 

Aly: 

So I want to just better understand this, because you both referenced trade as an ideology, and that it has become an end in itself. But when the World Trade Organization was created in 1994, it set out, as one of its objectives, to help developing countries benefit fully from the global trading system. So if international trade treaties and bodies like the WTO were set up specifically to help countries be able to trade equally, why is the outcome so different?

Dearden:

So there’s a huge difference between free trade in theory and what it actually looks like in practice. The very corporations that benefit so much from this trade system were there in the negotiations on the teams of the most advanced countries, when they were actually discussing what the WTO rules should look like. So that's one thing where there are vested interests here that are making rules, because they know it's, it's in their interests, and it's going to it's going to increase their profits and their control to do that. So I think that's one problem we've got with WTO rules. But also, we talk about WTO rules being fair, but who are you talking about them being fair to? And very often, they're supposed to be fair towards international investors, which means multinational corporations, and international capital. And what we mean by fair is treating that international capital, at least as favourably, if not more so, than you are allowed to treat your own domestic industry, your own farmers, your own infant industries. And guess what, when these enormous titans come up against an infant industry, or small farmers in your country, they are able to out compete them. No country has ever, ever been able to develop without protecting its industries, and its farmers, and yet, under WTO rules, they weren't allowed to do that. Why? Because we were told that wasn't fair on international competition. I mean, this isn't a WTO rule but it is something that is embedded in many, many bilateral trade deals, and bilateral investment deals. These corporations and international investors even have their own kind of courts, their own parallel legal system. It's called investor state dispute settlement, where if they believe they have been treated unfairly in any way, they are able to bypass the legal model within the country that they're working in and go straight to international arbitration and say, ‘No, you treated me unfairly.’ And what does unfair mean? Well, it often means I expected when I came into this country to win so much profit over the next 20 years, you've changed the rules, for whatever reason, to protect the healthcare of your people or to protect the environment, that’s not fair. I am now going to sue you, often several times what I've invested in your country, and you're going to pay me for it. 

Aly: 

You being the government?

Dearden:

You being the government, right. So, in what sense, is that fair? It's fair, from a very specific standpoint, enjoyed by the big winners of the globalisation project, some of the most powerful players in the world. And I would say what we should be looking for if what we want to do is empower and develop parts of the world that have been colonised and exploited for a long time, is actually so we don't want to be fair to those players. Actually, we have to change the rules that mean that those players have so much power and weight in the world. But trade rules, as they exist at the moment, make it much, much harder to do that. They stripped governments of the tools that they need to develop their own economies and to protect their people and their environments.

Aly:  

And so in 2001, there was this so-called Doha round of trade negotiations at the WTO aimed at revising the rules, to lower trade barriers and improve the prospects for developing countries. What success did that effort have?

Dearden:

The problem was, a lot of stuff was put on the table for developing countries in those talks that never actually materialised. And developing countries were told, you give us this, you give us this, and you will get in return a set of rules that benefit you. And they didn’t, it never happened. So developing countries gave up on the intellectual property provisions. They gave up on TRIPS, they allowed agriculture to be inserted into WTO rules, yet they never got back what was promised. And effectively, what this comes down to is just realpolitik. It's just within those negotiations, the US would come with its corporate interests, with its lobbyists, they would understand very well exactly what they were negotiating. And many countries just simply didn't have the lobbying teams, the expertise. They simply weren't able to push back. Although, I would say I mean, there was a limit to that and the limit was reached when the WTO effectively stalled at that period. You’ll remember the Battle of Seattle and the big protests that went on. It was actually the case that many, many years the WTO was unable to come up with an agreement, because developing countries were saying, we just don't think this is right, this isn't fair, and this isn't going to benefit us. And that's really interesting. And that's when the real momentum moved outside of the WTO, to the bilateral trade agreements, the bilateral investment agreements, and so on, and power was kind of moved and relocated there. AI think from that moment on any idea that Doha was going to be beneficial for most countries in the world was effectively gone. And unless you were a country like India, say, which is a big enough country, that it's actually able to say, we ain't doing this, or China says, whatever you say here, we're going to do things a bit differently from this. And of course, most countries in the world don't have that kind of power or leverage. What you saw, as we’ve already ehard really eloquently, was the reinforcement of a terms of trade, that is effectively colonial, you know, that effectively comes from the days of empire, and has never really been changed.

Aly:

Gyude?

Moore:

Trade policy is itself an extension of a country's foreign policy. Foreign policy is driven by the domestic political economy. So I want to step back here, across the European Union, and here in the United States, there’s significant support from the governments to farmers. Sometimes those subsidies undercut the competitiveness of even the poor countries. So in areas where the poor countries would have done really well, because of the amount of support and subsidies farmers in rich countries get, they're able to out compete them. The farming community in the United States is telling the government you cannot sign anything that puts us at a disadvantage, right? They're already the farmers in the wealthiest countries in the world. So of course, they're significantly more competitive than your smallholder farmers across much of the places we're talking about, like where I'm from. If we were to make the rules fair, they would be impacted by those. So back to Doha, in previous rounds, developing countries gave and gave and gave and got nothing in return, the terms of trade didn't change for them. international trade sort of cemented them at the bottom of the value chain. That’s why, personally, I'm hopeful, you know, fingers crossed for the Africa continental free trade area. Because if we are able to create a single market out of 54 economies, then we are India-sized. Then we're China-sized. And all of a sudden it gives you leverage and power to be able to make those kinds of changes on the international scene.

Aly:  

So I want to turn to the way forward, and this new kind of intra-African trade agreement is one step that has been touted as a positive move. But sticking at the global level, I heard the Director-General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonji-Iweala describing the reaction of one of her children when she said she was taking the role. And her son saw trade as kind of marginalising people leading to all this inequity and said to her, how can you do this? How can you join the WTO? And she said, that in the preamble text of the World Trade Organization’s agreement, its stated goal is to raise living standards and support sustainable development. And that her vision was to turn this instrument, trade, into one of inclusion, and to see how trade could be a solution to the pandemic, to climate change, etc. So I'm curious, your view in her nearly two years in office now, has she made progress on that vision of transforming trade into a force for good?

Moore:

I feel sorry for her, it’s so hard, because she takes over and we have this global pandemic COVID. And one of the things that COVID ended up doing it made countries really parochial. Countries turned inward. They began to focus more on protecting their companies, protecting the livelihoods of their citizens, and ensuring that their firms survive. So she comes up at a moment where countries are not really interested in doing things to open up trade, right? I mean, so that's one thing. And just when that is beginning to subside and the world is beginning to open up again, Russia decides it's time to invade Ukraine. And so her tenure has coincided with a set of crises that have really made it difficult for trade to expand. So the intent is still there. And you can see she's trying really, really hard. But her efforts has significantly been overtaken by events.

 I still think there's an opportunity here. You know, Rahm Emanuel, the former White House Chief of Staff under Obama, is reputed to have said, you never let a good crisis go to waste, like in the midst of crisis there can be opportunities. The West has found it really, really difficult to get developing countries to just sort of follow them in blanket condemnation of Russia or, or do that. And I honestly believe that if we're going to do real politic, this is one of the places to do it. There are things that that smaller countries have been asking for about international trade that they haven't gotten for a long time. And to be able to say, look, we can go along with you, if we can get some changes here. I like. So this is what they've been doing for a long time. And so for the first time, in a long time, smaller countries have slightly more leverage than they ordinarily would have. And so by being able to ask for changes in global governance, places where those changes have been lacking for a while, this is an opportunity.

Aly:  

I was just going to ask Nick how you think, a country well, I can overcome those powerful interests that you've both described. But maybe that's one, one strategy?

Dearden: 

We've been involved really actively in trying to get just a temporary suspension of the intellectual property laws I described earlier, just on the COVID medicines, and it was, you know, a Herculean effort that in the end, even even President Biden supported it right. But it still didn't get through. So it was incredible. The idea that one person is going to change this. I mean, they're just not. It's too big. I just think a perfect metaphor for this is, you remember the ship early in, I think it was early in the pandemic that got stuck in the Suez Canal. Because we've actually built ships too big to go through the main artery of the supply chain system, because that's how ‘just in time’ the markets are that we're trying to provide. It's incredibly fragile. And I think, countries like my own have also realised it's meant to deindustrialisation, to some degree, that's left large portions of our populations, deeply unhappy, angry, frustrated, and disempowered. And that can’t go on. You can't forever just tell people don't worry about it, the market will provide you cheaper goods, and it doesn't matter if you have a job or not. And it doesn’t matter if we have any industry or not. Also, what the United States and the United Kingdom and Europe also need to realise is, if it's good for us, it's good for every country in the world. If we are saying we need to rebuild our economies, and we need to flout international trade rules to do that. We need to not only allow but support other countries around the world in doing that, too. They are not simply a source of our raw materials for our green revolutions. They also need to change their economies. And I think that's going to be the argument. But I still think that probably has to begin happening at a national level, as opposed to just assuming that that's going to come out of a bunch of negotiations at the World Trade Organization, because the vested interests are too strong there at the moment. 

Aly: 

So where Gyude mentioned, for instance, the African continental free trade agreement, where are you seeing movement in the right direction?

Dearden: 

He's absolutely right there. I mean, one of the most interesting experiments during the period of the World Trade Organization was actually in the early 2000s in Latin America. Where the countries said these trade rules really aren’t in our interests, and they even formed an alternative trading bloc called Alba. And they said, when we trade, we want to make sure that primarily it's about inter-regional trade, because our countries have more in common than simply fuelling the hyper-consumption of the advanced economies. And also, they should be about redistribution from wealthier areas to poor areas of our continent. There were some really interesting ideas, and it was never developed enough to be, I think, an experiment that we can look to and say, this provides a definite better way. But I think we can look back to some of those ideas, and absolutely apply them within the African Union. There has to be a, not only a national, but a regional, I would argue, economic strategy of coordination, that allows those countries to support and cooperate and integrate with each other. And let's remember, that was the last thing the old imperial powers wanted. They wanted to break up these unions. The future should be for those economies to come together and say, you know, we were going to build ourselves up and stand on our own two feet and build our own resilience. And we're going to work out a way of doing that, that and, and, you know, that doesn't mean we're not going to trade with other countries in the world. But we can only do that from a position of strength."

Moore:

I was just going to add to that that intra-Africa trade is in the teens. I think somewhere between 12 to 15 percent. In Asia it is over 66 percent. When you depend on outside markets that much, you are susceptible to any shock. So the more Africans trade with themselves, the more protected they are from shocks happening from outside the continent. One of the things that we should definitely look forward to is improving the amount and volume of trade that occurs within countries, within regions. I think this is an important step. But we should also be careful of the risks that are coming. The EU is considering imposing these barriers that if you produce a product using coal, or if you produce a product using natural gas, you face really high tariffs. Well, in Africa, the ability to be able to add value is probably going to use natural gas. Even as we think about ways forward, and how we can improve that, we should keep our eyes open to things that are happening currently, whether that is in China, in the EU, or in the United States. The one good thing that I will say, and I'm not saying it's the only good thing is, at the last China Africa forum, FOCAC, the Chinese pledged that over the three years from 2022 to 2025, they will import about 300 billion worth of goods from Africa. But because we don't have that much diversity, the Chinese decided, most African goods that are exported to China come in the form of agricultural goods. So they create these things called Green lanes that make it easier for African agricultural products to have access to the Chinese market. That seems to mean like a big partner who's willing to try to meet African countries where they are, we want to see similar kinds of things, not only, but to go beyond just agricultural products, the next point that slowly African countries can begin to go up the value chain, because if we're making more money from trade, our need for aid is going to significantly go down.

Aly:  

But I'm struck hearing you both talk about the way forward. It actually echoes a little bit what we discussed on the last episode, vis-à-vis vaccine equity. And the answer for some was really moving towards regional production of vaccines so as not to depend on the benevolence of the richer Western countries. And yet, if we talked about reimagining global governance that feels to me, like in the absence of a global solution, you have to move towards these other solutions. And I want to share with you this line I read in a New York Times editorial from 2016, saying: after 14 years of talks, members of the World Trade Organization have effectively ended the Doha round of negotiations, as we were saying earlier. And they described this as “not unexpected, given how fruitless those discussions have been”. And they said: “Now, world leaders need to think anew about the global trading system”. And to my mind, the question is then, so what would that new global trading system look like? But what I’m hearing from both of you is, is there so little hope in that being possible that you move towards the bilateral deals; you move towards the intra-regional trade. So is there hope for a new, reimagined global trading system? 

Dearden:

I think there is hope. But as I say, I think it comes out of the understanding at national levels, that we have put too much faith - far too much faith - in the international marketplace, to provide for us and we need some resilience. But that doesn't mean of course, that doesn't mean you've got to make everything yourself, as if there's nothing outside your own little village. Of course, it doesn't. But it does mean that the idea that free trade is the answer to every problem in the world has been indisputably disproven. We saw at the beginning of the pandemic, where essentially markets just froze - that's what markets do in a crisis. The one thing that COVID did show me, and I think this is relevant to the climate crisis actually, is the importance of intellectual property, intangible assets to modern multinational corporations. And how this actually allows the hoarding of knowledge at a global level and turning many countries into effectively just renters of technology rather than being able to control technology, which is increasingly important to their economies. And I think a much, much looser form of intellectual property will be necessary. We are now beginning to talk about some kind of peace clause. So any technologies that had to do with solving climate change or halting climate change, there's no intellectual property that's allowed on that kind of thing. That for me should be the absolute cornerstone of a new economic cooperation on an international level.

Aly:

Gyude, what about you? What's your vision beyond kind of building the resilience of the African continent? 

Moore:

If you have been a dominant party for a long time, equality looks unfair to you. And so what we're seeing is that power is accruing in places outside of the West. China is becoming powerful, the global economy is becoming Asia-centric. India is becoming powerful. Apowerful block out of Africa and Latin America now forces the world to deal more equitably with those people. So I think as Africa's own market grows, and people wanting access to the African market increases Africa's leverage. We are seeing a dispersion of power that did not exist before. And maybe that's a good thing, maybe it allows us to be able to get a slightly better deal than we have gotten since 1945.

Aly:

So interesting. One final question for both of you, which is when we ask in every episode. Nick, you mentioned this clause permitting countries to access climate technology without running into intellectual property issues. If you were to pick one, practical or achievable entry point into fairer trade policies in the way you've both been describing, where do you see the place that countries, or other parties for that matter, should focus as an easy or a low hanging fruit way into that vision?

Dearden:

So I would definitely suggest that finally we are too late, but waking up to the climate crisis and how serious it is. The fact that so many governments now we're saying, look, this is just too serious for us to be held up by all of these international trade rules. This idea that the market is going to deal with climate change is just so far from the reality that they are just simply beginning to ignore them. And for me, that's a positive. In order to deal with the climate crisis, governments need tools, serious political and economic tools to protect their people and protect the environment and start developing their economy in a different way. And international trade rules cannot get in the way of that. And so for me, that's a that's a wonderful weigh in and it doesn't just apply to Climate Technologies, it applies to food. You know, you look at India, which has been the big holdout country for many years now saying, we are not going to simply open up our entire food system to the international marketplace. That's not right. We want to be able to offer our farmers a decent price and certain protections and so on. And, you know, there's been a huge impasse for many, many years now. Well, with climate change coming that's going to be all the more important. And so I think this i idea of governments being able to protect their people to use economic tools at their disposal as every country that's ever developed, has done, and can be seen so clearly by so many people. In terms of the dangers we face from global warming, that it gives us the opportunity to argue for a form of economics at an international level, that once again begins to put the lives of people ahead of corporate profit, which has been the mantra of the last 40 years.

Aly: 

I hear you on the kind of opportunity that exists right now, or the swelling of momentum. But I'm also hearing you say, basically, that governments should say no more often?

Dearden:

Absolutely, they must say no more. If more governments had more successfully had the power and the leverage to say no, from the mid-1990s, we wouldn't have some of these awful rules. And, I think, as we said at the beginning, that's not to say that's not to take the responsibility away from individual governments. But the idea that they shouldn't be able to act in the interests of their own publics, because of a bunch of international agreements that have given preference to international capital for several decades. Yeah, absolutely. And I really hope that we're at a point now where governments are beginning to be able to say no more.

Aly:  

It doesn't sound like super low hanging fruit. Gyude, maybe you'll come up with an easier entry point.

Moore:

Both the destination countries and the sending countries should agree that over the next five years, so Europe will say we will no longer accept unprocessed raw materials. You have to add some sort of value. So what happens? All of the the businesses across Europe and across China and the United States that are bringing that, will have to establish some sort of processing capabilities in Africa. And in that one action, you improve the terms of trade for most African countries. Of course, that's not going to happen. But if the countries get powerful enough to be able to impose that Côte d'Ivoire says, look, five years from now, we're no longer going to allow raw beans out of our country. And Europe is like, yeah, we're not going to allow raw beans here. All of a sudden that processing begins to happen. It creates jobs, it creates values, the countries are able to capture more value there.

Aly:  

What's Europe’s incentive in agreeing to that?

Moore:

None. But here’s the thing, Europe is Africa’s neighbour. And what Europe is obsessed with when it comes to Africa, of course, is to keep as many Africans at home as possible, and not let them come to Europe. So the argument is, if there are more and more jobs in Africa, then maybe the Africans are not going to come here, that's your benefit. You get your immigration.

Dearden:

And I would maybe add to that, again, in the wake of the climate crisis, many people here are beginning to think: ‘Actually, maybe we can't import all of our food’. And that's not just talking about subsidies to the major corporate agribusiness that we were talking about earlier, it's saying: ‘We need more small farmers here, because we can't be completely dependent upon another part of the world to get all of our food’. The idea that the market will deliver, that big business will deliver in any crisis, has has been disproven. And I think people are waking up to that. Why on earth should Kenya, should Ghana, gear up their entire economies to serve our needs? I think a lot of people really do understand that there's a basic injustice there. And it's not how things should be and it means that we've got to begin restructuring our own economies as well.

Aly:

It's just fascinating to see how this particular moment in history is bringing all of these things to a head thanks to COVID, thanks to climate change, you mentioned due to the invasion of Ukraine. And that this really does feel like a unique moment in history in which some kind of change is on the horizon on some of these really intractable issues. And more broadly, a recognition that all of these questions that, for our humanitarian community, would never have been even part of the conversation before, like trade, suddenly the links are becoming much stronger. So it's really interesting. And I'm surprisingly leaving this conversation thinking maybe change is going to happen. So thanks for that. Nick, Gyude, really, really interesting to speak to you both. 

Moore:

Appreciate it.

Dearden:

It’s a real pleasure, thank you.

Aly:

Gyude Moore is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development; and formerly Minister of Public Works of Liberia. Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now. 

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected]. 

We did hear from a few of you about our episode from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, in which we asked: Are the world’s business and political elite ready to share power in the way that is needed for some of the changes we’ve heard called for on the podcast to take hold. 

In response, Dutch aid workers Arjan Hehenkamp posted on LinkedIn: “Of course they won't. And we shouldn’t expect ‘Davos’ to have actual responsibility or power. It institutionalizes unaccountable power. Just leave them to network, to drink, to fly, to rub shoulders with other rich and influential people. Change happens elsewhere, and so it should.”

In contrast, we also heard from a women rights’ activist who was present in Davos and she said the podcast made her feel more optimistic about activists' presence in Davos than she was when she left.

Today, we’ll leave you with some thoughts from journalist and author Haley Edwards about how trade rules govern our lives.

This podcast is a production of The New Humanitarian.

This episode was produced and edited by Marthe van der Wolf.

Original music by Whitney Patterson

And I’m your host Heba Aly.

Thank you for listening to Rethinking Humanitarianism.