As his grip on power in the UK slips, undermined by his own remarkable lack of judgement, David Cameron his gone off to South Africa for a couple of days to support the Bob Diamond / Barclays Bank gravy train.
He will praise his generation for marching against African debt and for holding concerts to raise funds for aid to the continent.
No mention of apartheid I note, or Barclays and the Tories role in supporting it. What a strange oversight. There is this though:
But in article in the South African Business Day he will call for a change of approach. "They have never once had a march or a concert to call for what will in the long term save far more lives and do far more good — an African free trade area," he writes.
This is utterly untrue. In a continent where collecting direct taxes is nigh on impossible - because people don't earn enough and the infrastructure is not in place - tariffs are essential if revenue is to be raised. But Cameron wants them abolished. The cost to health care, education and well-being will be enormous. Jeffery Owens at the OECD reckoned during a conversation with me a couple of years ago it would be 30% or more of all African tax. That will deliver untold misery.
More than that - Cameron knows (or he should know) o country has developed without the benefit of tariff barriers. It's how infant industries develop. But off goes Cameron to demand the creation of the Washington Consensus' dream in Africa - a continent left open to Western exploitation without tax being paid in any local country.
Sickening.
But so typically Cameron.
Has the man any wisdom at all?
Let alone the most basic of human emotions - empathy. But for an accident of birth he might face the poverty that is reality for so many Africans, and he seems utterly unable to understand that. Instead he goes to support one of the most notorious companies involved in the oppression of this continent - Barclays Bank.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
“More than that — Cameron knows (or he should know) no country has developed without the benefit if tariff barriers.”
Completely untrue – try the UK in the 19th century.
Tariffs are a disaster for everyone – mostly the people of Africa.
By the time UK began abolishing tariffs it was already dominant in world trade
Please get facts right
And after abolishing tariffs, it retained that position for all of 20 years or so before — inevitably — its American and German competitors nudged it into a long terminal nose-dive. Historians in this country love to place the blame for its economic decline squarely on the Great War, but in reality the writing was clearly visible on the wall by the mid-1880s. Britain’s vigorous protection of its (deeply unpopular) trade protectionism throughout the early 19th century was what secured and maintained its economic supremacy. The statement that “tariffs are a disaster for everyone” is just ideological bunk — they have been and continue to be vital tools for the development of trade in particular economic climates.
Another book worth reading is Erik Reinert’s “How rich countries got rich … and why poor countries stay poor” which, inter alia, documents how tarrifs have always been crucial in increasing national wealth. For instance, long before the industrial revolution Henry Vll transformed the economy in part by imposing export tarrifs on wool – then the major export – so forcing the higher value added process of producing cloth to relocate to England.
Naturally, when a country has established an unassailable technology/economies of scale lead it tends to switch to a free trade stance. Sorry to dissapoint neoliberals, but one-size-fits-all policy prescriptions just don’t work.
Mark
I suggest that you read ’23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism’ by Ha-Joon Chang, the Reader in the Political Economy of Development at Cambridge University to find out about the role of tariff protection and the development of infant industries. Trade protectionism was also used by the United States in the 1880s and is being used by China now to promote economic development.
“Completely untrue — try the UK in the 19th century.”
Actually, very true indeed. The US, Britain and, incidently, a big percentage of the so-called “Asian Tiger Economies” in the 1980’s all built up their economic dominance with a heavy dollop of protectionism. In fact, one of the best ways to develop your economy is to build your domestic industry and use tarrifs and other protectionist measures.
Incidently, one of the best ways to wreck an economy, particularly if you are heavily in debt, is to sell off many of your public assets, lower your taxes and let in foreign banks and industry that is only cheifly interested in the export market.
That is one of the surest way of making sure that most of the money that flows in from foreign investment simply flows straight back out again.
Yes there will be people earning wages, but whar will they cheifly be spent on? Imported goods. Yes, these companies are paying a degree of tax, but where is most of the money going? It is simply being repatriated to these companies home countries. If you are a country heavily in debt, where us the rest of your money going? To pay off your country’s debts.
Where are you left if the companies, banks and financial institutions decide to pull their money out of your country and put it in another they decide is a ar better investment than yours?
Up s**t creek without a paddle, that’s where!!
25 organisations involved in the PM’s trip to Africa – are they also part of Bob Diamond’s gravy train?
And do some proper research on Barclays – they withdrew during the apartheid era.
Incidentally, the South African Revenue Service puts HMRC to shame. The UK could learn a lot about tax legislation, how it should be properly drafted and how a proper system operates taking into account the interests of both taxpayer and fiscus.
Pull the other one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays#Involvement_with_South_Africa_under_apartheid
But I agree re SARS
Egypt, Babylon, Crete, Athens, Persia, Carthage, Rome …. (I don’t know enough about China, India etc)
I think you need to qualify
Oh for heaven’s sake – at least draw reasonable comparison
Since a tariff increases the price of imported goods, can you please explain how putting tariffs on imported goods into Africa helps the people of Africa who are often in dire famine? What I’ve always failed to understand is that the people who favour protectionism in Africa are very often the same people who decry rising global food prices. The fact is in the absence of tariffs the African people would get cheaper food.
And how can you oppose an African free trade area as Cameron is proposing, or are you letting cheap politics rule your head again? Do you seriously think there should be tariffs and quotas between each and every African state and that it would produce good results?
You completely miss the point
the principle role of tariffs is a) to protect local business while it develops and b) raise money on exports – which is precisely what Cameron et al want to stop
It is not to tax food
Why are you misrepresenting the policy objective?
You seem to have missed the point that the policy objective is not always the same as the end result.
A tariff IS a tax on food for the African people. They are paying higher food prices than they otherwise would do but for the tariff. And people are starving. That is a fact. Why do you deny it?
I’m saying that is not the inevitable result of tariffs
And I am saying tariffs are good for Africa – as unambiguously when done in the right way they are
“A tariff IS a tax on food for the African people. “
And privatising almost every state asset that isn’t nailed down and gearing your economy almost solely towards exports in order to pay off debts helps African people how exactly?
Short answer: it doesn’t! It just makes a bad situation worse.