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TRADE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. An interesting remembrance from Nobel prize winning economist and former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz:
[T]he agenda got seized. In the book I talk about how in the last round, patents and intellectual property rights got shoved into the WTO. The result was that access to generic medicines was reduced, forcing poor countries to pay very high prices that they cannot afford. That agreement, signed in Marrakesh in 1994, was in effect a death warrant for thousands and thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa.[...]One of the most amusing ones I talk about is the patent on basmati rice, or on the medicinal use of turmeric. In the latter case it was actually an Indian doctor working in America that took out the patent. These are examples of what I call an unbalanced intellectual property regime. Interestingly, I was on the Council of Economic Advisers at the time, and in the office of science and technology policy, we thought these intellectual property provisions were not good for even the United States. They weren't good for science in America or for global science, and we opposed them. But in the end the drug companies and the entertainment industry prevailed.That's worth reading again. These free trade agreements are generally justified by an appeal to basic economics. It may not make sense, but if you had a PhD, you'd understand. That's what gets seemingly sentient commentators like Tom Friedman to say silly things like, "I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn�t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.� But here's Stiglitz explaining that what's wrapped up in these free trade agreements is not related to economic theory, or even free trade. Quite the opposite, in fact. Maybe if Friedman had known what was in the bill, that would've come clear to him.--Ezra Klein
