Obama salutes WTO, says small businesses are big winners

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Politico

President Barack Obama praised the World Trade Organization on Sunday morning for striking its first fully multilateral trade deal in its nearly 20-year history. Small businesses would be among those to benefit most, the president said.

The WTO overcame two major challenges from India and a group of Latin American countries led by Cuba before reaching a deal on Saturday, in Bali, Indonesia, that is expected to generate as much as $1 trillion in global economic output.

“This new deal, and particularly the new trade facilitation agreement, will eliminate red tape and bureaucratic delay for goods shipped around the globe,” Obama said in a statement from the White House. “Small businesses will be among the biggest winners, since they encounter the greatest difficulties in navigating the current system. By some estimates, the global economic value of the new WTO deal could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

“The WTO’s Bali agreement also represents the rejuvenation of the multilateral trading system that supports millions of American jobs and offers a forum for the robust enforcement of America’s trade rights. As such, we are proud of the United States’ leadership role in reaching this accord and congratulate WTO Director-General Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo and our fellow WTO members on this achievement.”



Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/obama-wto-says-small-business-100831.html

[warrant46]

1. Whatever

What am I supposed to think about this. How will it help the small businesses in my town when Walmart is about to build another new SuperCenter ?

[cstanleytech]

3. Well walmart already had it easy in doing deals. Hopefully this isnt a snowjob and it will

make it as easy for the smaller businesses to do deals as well but I am not going to hold my breath over that being the case.

[Deep13]

2. For a smart guy, he can be kind of an idiot sometimes.

What trade treaty has ever helped working people, whether business owners or employees?

[LibDemAlways]

4. If he was truly on the side of working people,

TPTB would never have sanctioned his nomination. We have to be satisfied with whatever crumbs the 1% chose to toss our way.

[Deep13]

5. Isn't that what's happening? nt

[2banon]

10. W was so freaking stupid, anyone else seemed brilliant in comparison.

the bar on intelligence has been set really, really low.

It's not O's fault, he didn't know when he ran for office, that he was only going to be a figure head.

Fantasizing on the day, he just comes out and tells everyone in America whose actually calling the shots, and how this game is rigged worse than our worst nightmares. He'd be the ultimate whistleblower, a real hero then. but i'm not holding my breath.

[Demo_Chris]

6. At this point my automatic reaction is skepticism...

It's pretty sad, but there it is. I simply do not trust this administration.

[2banon]

11. No administration can be trusted, because no Administration really

has the power to do anything different other than supporting the status quo.

[NCarolinawoman]

7. He certainly doesn't seem to live in the real world.

[jsr]

8. Indeed. Main Street has never been more prosperous.

[cprise]

9. Contrast with the Climate Change Conference

When the United Nations Climate Change Conference wrapped up in Warsaw the weekend before last, it did, despite what most observers and disappointed NGO representatives believe, yield a result. It just wasn't officially announced: the termination of the at-least symbolic general agreement that urgent action must be taken to counter global warming. In other words, climate change has been definitively removed from the global policy agenda.

-snip-

The United States' lack of interest in an international treaty is dressed up by its argument that gas extracted by fracking is more climate-friendly than coal, while in Japan, the Fukushima disaster and resulting phase-out of nuclear power has provided those responsible with an excellent argument for why the country now needs to burn more coal in order to stay economically competitive. Hannelore Kraft, governor of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, feels much the same way about her own state. And Australia, Canada, Poland and Russia have never really grasped why global warming should stop anyone from burning everything the oil rigs, mines and pipelines have to offer in the first place.

Capitalism Triumphant

To put it another way: The primacy of economics has prevailed. It no longer seems to matter how we're supposed to get through the rest of this century if the world grows warmer by three, four or five degrees Celsius. National economies require an ever-growing dose of energy if their business models are to continue functioning, and, in the face of this logic, all scientific objections to the contrary are just as powerless as the climate protest movements, which are, in any case, marginal.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/warsaw-climate-conference-shows-capitalism-root-of-climate-failure-a-937453.html

...or what used to be capitalism, anyway, replete with legal immunity for its top bosses.

[Wilms]

12. ^

[Laelth]

13. Yeah, right.

In what possible way could this treaty benefit small businesses? I don't see it. It might be good for the United States, as a whole, but small business gets a lot of lip service and little real protection. Whenever a politician says X policy will be good for small business, I immediately assume that X policy will greatly enrich big business and have little, if any, impact on small business.



-Laelth

[pampango]

14. This will infuriate the America's far right. Texas GOP party platform 2012: US out of the WTO & UN.

International Organizations – We support U.S. withdrawal from the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank.

United Nations – We support the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations and the removal of U.N. headquarters from U.S. soil.

Law of the Sea – Adopted by the UN in 1982, we still oppose the Law of the Sea Treaty.

UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child ― We unequivocally oppose the United States Senate’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

United Nations Agenda 21 -The Republican Party of Texas should expose all United Nations Agenda 21 treaty policies and its supporting organizations, agreements and contracts. We oppose implementation of the UN Agenda 21 Program which was adopted at the Earth Summit Conference in 1992 purporting to promote a comprehensive program of sustainable development projects, nationally, regionally and locally.

Cap and Trade – We oppose Cap and Trade (“Cap and Tax”).

http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Platform_Final.pdf

Trade and trade agreements are particularly unpopular with the far right also.

[Xithras]

15. Trade agreements are unpopular with EVERYONE...

...except the 1%.

[pampango]

17. The republican base hates them much more than Democrats and independents.

[Bragi]

16. What nonsense

It's embarrassing that Obama thinks anyone other than the 1 per cent will think that small business will be the primary beneficiary of trade pacts that give global corporations legal rights over national governments.