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Beggaring Thy NeighborsPoorer countries no longer have rich ones to blame for inequalities in trade. Now

they're the ones pulling the strings.

BY GREG RUSHFORD | MAR ! "#$ "%&

The miseries inflicted by colonial powers on Africa, Asia, and Latin America areundeniable to economic historians. Borders were drawn that made no economic or ethnicsense; little was invested in the human capital or the institutional structure needed forgrowth and stability. And while the sun set on the western colonial empires more than ahalf century ago, the leaders of what are today called developing countries all have reasonto appreciate illiam Faul!ner"s line# $The past is never dead. %t"s not even past.$

&ne living legacy is a cra'y (uilt of trade preferences and protection buttressed by a mi) of

geopolitics, nostalgia, and rich*country interest group protectionism ** distortions thatundermine growth in e)port*oriented agriculture and ma!e it tough for women in some ofthe poorest countries in the world to sew their way out of poverty. %ndeed, mostdeveloping country leaders view rich*country protectionism as the cause ofthe deadlock in the orld Trade &rgani'ation"s so*called Doha Round of negotiationsaimed at sweeping trade liberali'ation.The advanced economies do indeed deserve a disproportionate share of the blame. But as

economist +imon venett of +wit'erland"s -niversity of +t. allen has observed, $the beggar thy neighbor game is not confined to /orth*+outh trade.$ The African0evelopment Ban! recently reported that only about one*tenth of the continent"s totaltrade is neighbor*to*neighbor. The numbers for Latin America and Asia are higher 122percent and 34 percent respectively5. Poor countries complaining about commerce*impeding barriers would be well advised to chec! the mirror to see where their troubleslay.6ost levies imposed by America and urope have fallen to 7ust 2 to8 percent, while a

handful of newly rich countries led by 9ong :ong and +ingapore have dispensed withtariffs on virtually everything.

/ow consider est Africa"s Benin, one of the poorest countries in the world 1 GDP perperson in terms of purchasing power#

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:enya, wanda, -ganda, and Burundi had been pared from 84 to

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