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At the time of writing, plans (since paused) by the US administration of Donald Trump to unleash steep import tariffs against a broad swathe of countries have roiled the world economy. The initial tariff announcement triggered fears of inflation, weaker demand and global recession and rocked financial markets, showing once again how trade measures can have far-reaching effects on nations’ economic well-being. This is a reality well recognised by the late Chakravarthi Raghavan in his decades of journalism covering international trade and development issues, not least in his seminal Recolonization. In this book, originally published by the Third World Network in 1990, Raghavan cautioned that a little-known series of intergovernmental trade negotiations then taking place behind closed doors could end up subjugating the economies of the Global South to big business interests from the rich countries. It would take another four years before the Uruguay Round talks were officially concluded in 1994, but what Raghavan warned of largely came to pass. Encompassing a spectrum of issues related to international trade, the set of agreements struck under the Round effectively favoured the interests of developed countries and their profit-hungry, market-seeking corporations, impairing developing countries’ efforts to build up their own economies. These extensive treaties were all brought under the umbrella of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be administered and enforced by this Geneva-based institution established as the governing body for global trade. Attempts by developing countries over the years to redress the inequities in the international trade rules have been stymied by developed-country intransigence. Now, amid this unfinished business at the WTO, a grave new challenge has come up in the form of the planned unilateral US tariffs. Here it is worth noting that the Uruguay Round agreements, for all their flaws, made up a negotiated package whose binding multilateral rules were expected to banish the threat of disruptive trade measures taken unilaterally by powerful countries. This expectation has now been shattered by the US tariff plans, which were initiated on highly questionable grounds. For example, one purported aim of the tariffs is to rebalance the US’ goods trade deficit with other countries, but this neglects its huge surplus in services trade, including in royalties received by intellectual property holders, as well as digital trade. It is instead developing countries which face sizeable resource outflows in these areas, thanks in large part to the Uruguay Round, which crafted comprehensive rules mandating strict intellectual property rights and granting market access to major service providers from the developed world. The scale and dominance of digital trade by US corporations was also not anticipated at the time. The swingeing US levies, if eventually imposed, would violate WTO norms and upend global trade dynamics. Through it all, however, one thing would still remain the same: the propensity of developed countries to bend the trade system to suit their narrow agendas. Seen in this light, Washington’s proposed new tariffs may only be a more drastic manifestation of a longstanding problem. The countries of the North have long sought to carve out for themselves an undue advantage in international trade, be it by fashioning lopsided rules (as so perceptively documented in Recolonization) or, when even these rules can’t serve their ambitions, by bypassing them (as appears the case with the US tariffs). And often at the receiving end of such irresponsible actions are the developing countries, already grappling as they are with the challenges of poverty eradication and sustainable development, compounded now by an unprecedented external debt burden for many of these countries. Dealing with trade troubles will require a developing country to craft a trade policy that is aligned with its broader development goals, and to in turn have the policy guide its negotiating strategy in trade fora. In the multilateral WTO negotiations, it also becomes necessary to find common cause with other developing countries and forge a united front as far as possible, as recommended by Raghavan in his book. While specific technical issues discussed in the book may differ from what’s on the table today, its underlying theme endures: the need for the Global South to protect its economic sovereignty and guard against attempts at subordination in the trade arena. This is why the Third World Network is pleased to make available here the full text of Recolonization, in the hope that its analysis and insights will reach a new readership looking to navigate the choppy trade waters of our time. Lim Mah Hui
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