special safeguard mechanisms

[ryanpatgray]

I found an interesting article in Reason Magazine about so called “special safeguard mechanisms”. Supporters claim they will protect “livelihoods” in third world countries. What these “special safeguard mechanisms” actually do is perpetuate poverty as anyone versed in free market economics should understand. Since providing links causes posts to get delayed, I will just post the URL here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/127925.html

[MatthewWilliam]

It sounds like the Indians want to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted the US and EU to cut subsidies, but wanted to maintain the SSM (ie, the option of raising tariffs whenever they felt like it.

The “livelihood” debate is completely bogus nowadays, but you must remember that India has a caste system (still?) in existence.

Whenever a trade discussion comes up I like to use this:

A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting.## To the Honourable Members of the Chamber of Deputies.### Gentlemen:

…

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us ^[1].

We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds – in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat.

…

F. Bastiat

More here: http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

[ryanpatgray]

AH Yes, the candle makers’ petition. A true clasic.