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    I say that the Australian lamb export cut-off by the U.S. President is just one example of the foolishness of expecting the Great Powers to adopt genuine free trade policies. Mr Clinton supposedly bowed to the voting power of the American farmers.  In reality, he bowed to the huge export corporations, which are part of the corporate groupings that finance the multi-billion dollar U. S. election campaigns, and presumably pay bribes to politicians.
    To maintain cheap banana production for three big U.S. companies, 200 heavily-armed men recently surrounded a meeting of Guatemalan banana workers and forced union leaders to tell the local radio station that a demonstration had been cancelled.  The workers had been called together by the union, because almost 1000 workers had been dismissed from three plantations.  These plantations belonged to a subsidiary of Del Monte Fresh Produce, one of the "big three."  The UN agency trying to monitor the Peace Accords in Guatemala said this was the most serious violation of human rights since Archbishop Juan Jose Gerardi was murdered in 1998.
    In Colombia, the banana workers' leader Cesar Herrera Torreglosa was assassinated on 13 December 1999, as part of the same campaign to keep the banana workers' wages below subsistence level.
    Renwick Rose, a leader of the Windward Islands, hardest hit by the Banana War, said: "When you buy a cheap banana you are unwittingly participating in exploitation. People need to understand what lies behind the banana. There are children, mothers, fathers and blood, sweat and toil. Fair trade is not asking you to pay more, just what it costs."
    Meanwhile, businessmen and governments of the European Union and the United States are involved in a "Banana War" in the marketplace, and through the World Trade Organisation, where negotiations stumbled on.
    Raw salmon from North America, complete with viruses and other parasites, is being forced onto the Australian market in defiance of Tasmania's state rights, the exporters using the World Trade Organisation's lop-sided rules to overcome environmental considerations.
    The world's armaments trade was recently spotlighted again, huge bribes being uncovered.  Behind the disgraceful behaviour of the arms companies selling weapons to dictators and terrorists around the globe, and thus largely creating the refugee crisis, there is the ironic fact that in many developed countries research into new weapons is largely financed by government subsidies and other support.
    This is well-documented for the United Kingdom and the United States, as the Campaign Against the Arms Trade has shown.
    A few years ago it was revealed that the Italian Christian Democrats had been backed by the Mafia right from the start.  In recent months we had the amazing revelation that the German Christian Democrat party had been receiving "slush funds" from Big Business for years.  One donor to a Christian Democrat was a left-wing French President.  Far from convincing me that old enmities had faded away, I wondered where this Frenchman obtained the huge sum involved.  An Irish Prime Minister received a huge sum as a non-repayable loan from a businessman -- surely Big Business gets more than charming blarney and a Guinness or other liquor out of these transactions!
    Now that we understand more about parasites, some wide-awake people oppose too much international trade, and many oppose doctrinaire attitudes to free trade.  For example, North American forests are at risk from the long-horned asian beetles that come in packing boxes from mainland China.  The New York authorities tried to force the Communist Chinese to fumigate the boxes, but the WTO ruled that this was an unfair restraint of trade!
    Grape imports into Australia are now about to be increased at give-away prices -- does anyone remember the terrible imported grape disease that wiped out the wine industry in Victoria and other places about a century ago?  Will having cheaper grapes for a season or two pay for the ruined lives of the vineyard owners and workers if a similar disease gains entry?
    News Weekly published Max Teichmann's article saying that Australian rural industries were being slowly leached by tariff cuts, exclusion from important markets, and undercutting by subsidised products from the U.S.  Yet, the U.S. preaches economic rationalism and free trade!
    Your letter-writer said you can't have it both ways -- to criticise the fact that our citrus industry is being devastated by cheap imported juice, and to criticise Japan for imposing tariff barriers against Australian rice.
    I suggest that your journal has exposed the hypocrisy and stupidity of our leaders, past and present.  The growth of Australia's whole fruit industry was for the export trade -- it certainly wasn't to fill hungry Australian mouths.  Likewise, after the early ricegrowing attempts, every farm that grew rice after that was for export, just as our wheat farms have been for more than a century.
    With unjust bribes, worker exploitation, subsidies, tariffs, dumping, etc., it is no wonder that Australian politicians a century ago demanded protection from imports.
    Much of the world's trade is a waste of fuel and other precious resources.  Ships carrying cans of herring from Norway might be passing ships carrying herring to Norway.  Much of the trade is propped up by bad government laws on subsidies, low rural wages, land tax abolition, income tax concessions, etc., etc.
    But, in an ideal world, what we want is Fair Trade, not Free Trade.  A whole movement for Fair Trade has sprung up world-wide, largely since the big campaign against the now-stalled Multilateral Agreement on Trade (MAI).  I recommend that your readers use the internet to link with the Fair Trade movement, which is taking up signatures on a proposal to adopt a new kind of WTO that will respect the rights of workers and consumers to a healthy clean environment, as well as a living wage, decent conditions, and assurance of food production in each country.
  Yours faithfully, John Massam, March 16 2000
 

Free trade benefits everyone
  Sir, News Weekly needs to make its position clear on the issue of protection versus free trade.
    In the same sentence of your editorial (February 12, 2000) you complain about our citrus industry being "devastated" by cheap imported juice concentrates and then go on to criticise Japan for imposing tariff barriers against Australian rice.

Mark Hassed,
Canterbury, Vic

“Free trade” and predatory policies
  Sir, May I comment on M. Hassed's letter on free trade in News Weekly (March 11, 2000).
    Extremes in economic policy are neither practical nor useful.  Pursued to its limit, unrestricted free trade simply leads to the industrial and commercial barons going flat out until monopolies and oligopolies become rampant predators.
    This was exemplified in oil and rail in 19th and 20th Century America.  We are seeing a similar trend in banking and communications emerging in Australia now.

R. A. D'Arcy,
Burleigh Waters, Qld
  Editor's Note:
The writer worked for some 25 years at the Tariff Board, later the Industry Assistance Commission, in both research and projects.