The WTO circus in Hong Kong made me wonder what the conservative American libertarian think-tank, the Cato Institute, had to say on MC6. I was not disappointed; there is a very interesting, thought-provoking article by Marian Tupy on why sub-Saharan Africa was failing in an age of falling tariff barriers.

Now I have always been of the opinion that the populations of many developing countries depend on agriculture for their sustenance and survival; the farm subsidies of the development world therefore seem rather unfair in that they remove even comparative (as opposed to absolute) advantage from many such countries in the one area in which they might be expected to be competitive. There are counter-examples of course, like Argentina or Brazil. But by and large, the European's CAP (or should we say CRAP) put such hopes beyond reach.

However, the author harbors no such illusions. She believes that Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is in the state it's in not as passive losers in a global trade regime, but as masters of their own destruction due to highly protectionist policies (discouraging investment), trampling on property rights (discouraging saving and investment) and colossal corruption and mismanagement (again, discouraging investment). Allow me to quote her:

SSA is destined to remain poor, the conventional wisdom holds, unless the rich countries change their economic policies. African leaders are only too happy to play their part in that charade. Blaming African poverty on forces beyond the control of Africa's political elites takes the spotlight away from decades of failed economic policies, wholesale looting of Africa's wealth, and loss of countless lives to political repression and ethnic conflicts...But blaming others will do little to improve the lives of millions of poor Africans. In order to escape poverty, SSA countries must begin by liberalizing their trade with one another and with the rest of the world...Trade opening will result in welfare gains for SSA. But those welfare gains will not be on a scale that will drastically reduce African poverty. Indeed, the benefits of trade liberalization will be severely restricted unless trade opening is accompanied by far-reaching economic and political changes on the African continent.