”What if?” books are all the rage. Virtual historians tell us what would have happened if Hitler had won the Battle of Britain, or Kennedy had not been shot in Dallas. The latest contribution to this series surfaced in The Guardian recently, when Simon Heffer mused on the subject of ”what if” the IRA had murdered Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton bomb of 1984.
Hopes of a breakthrough in the stalled global trade talks were dealt a blow last Friday when a leaked letter from Europe’s trade commissioner highlighted the determination of Brussels to continue its -billion- a-year support for farmers.
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/ 13 February 2004
United States President George W Bush expressed alarm on Tuesday after oil cartel Opec threatened to undermine his chances of a second term in the White House by announcing a surprise cut in production from April.
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/ 28 October 2003
Britain is privately bracing itself for the stalled Doha trade liberalisation talks to miss their 2005 deadline by at least two years and fears the talks may have been totally derailed by the collapse of negotiations in Cancun last month. A confidential post-mortem examination is being prepared by the UK Department of Trade and Industry.
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/ 13 October 2003
Try not to be too sceptical. The global economy does appear to be on the mend. Growth is picking up in Japan and the United States, and sentiment is probably on the turn in Europe as well. Expect forecasts for 2004 to be revised upward over the next few months.
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/ 23 September 2003
Is the World Trade Organisation too big and cumbersome to work? What difference has the new coalition of developing countries made to the WTO? What have developing countries gained from Cancun? Was Europe to blame for the failure of Cancun? And what will happen now that the Cancun round has collapsed?
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/ 15 September 2003
The European Commission was secretly preparing to sabotage plans to help poor countries trade their way out of poverty, as backstairs wrangling dominated the opening day of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) talks in Cancun, Mexico.
”Citizens of Gettysburg, before I give my address I would like to thank our sponsor, Richard Jordan Gatling of Gatling Guns. I think it goes without saying that without the financial help provided by Mr Gatling, this speech would not be taking place.”
The widening gulf between the global haves and have-nots was starkly revealed this week when the United Nations announced that while the United States was booming in the 1990s, living standards fell in more than 50 countries.
Consumer groups and aid agencies have rounded angrily on the reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), warning that the compromise would leave taxpayers continuing to foot the bill for huge European farm surpluses that would harm producers in the developing world.