Practice Management

EU Trade Commissioner: Lose the protectionist jive.

By Dan Hull

One of the best points made in the 2008 U.S. presidential election has come from a British politician. A reporter with the Financial Times in London writes that EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, a former member of Parliament and Labour Party mainstay, has had it with candidates, presumably Obama and Clinton, hunting American Democratic votes with protectionist rhetoric that they themselves don't likely believe. And he thinks the campaign noise may be setting the world trading system back by "decades". According to the FT, in a BBC interview on Hardtalk soon to be aired, Mandelson said:

It is irresponsible to be pretending to people you can erect new protection, new tariff barriers around your economy in this 21st century global age and still succeed in sustaining living standards and jobs. It is a mirage and they know it...

It is going to lead us into a vicious spiral of beggar-thy-neighbour policies which will take us decades back in terms of trade growth.

Mandelson refused to name the culprits.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).