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Winston
Churchill once said that democracy was the
worst system of government except when compared
with everything else. Of course, he had
Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini in mind, not
Hong Kong's Tung Chee-hwa or Singapore's
Lee Kuan Yew when considering everything
else.
Whatever
Tung and Lee's faults, and however disappointing
they were to democratic purists, it must
be admitted that they steered clear of the
many inevitable pitfalls in that democracies
throw up the world over.
No
better example can be found these days than
in the senseless quarrel between Mexico
and Canada on one side and the United States
on the other. Here are three friendly nations,
normally on excellent terms with each other,
threatening to loose a trade war over meat
labels, under a US law called COOL - Country
of Origin Labelling.
The
problem is that for the US meat trade to
comply with COOL rules, meat wholesalers
must verify the provenance of imported meat
to the satisfaction of various US federal
inspectorates - all of which costs time
and money - so why bother. Which is what
the framers of the regulations intended,
says the bitter Mexicans and Canadians.
What
more, the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
agrees. It's an unfair non-tariff trade
barrier and as such, against the rules WTO
members have agreed to, it declared. But
at this writing, the COOL rule was still
the law of the land with free traders on
one side against an unlikely alliance of
rootin'-tootin' cattlemen and the worry
warts of the health & safety brigade,
who fear for everyone's health and safety.
Thus,
Mexicans and Canadians are girding their
loins for battle, fixing to slap tariffs
on US wine, chocolate, ketchup and cereal
as well as 100 per cent surtax on frozen
orange juice, stainless steel pipes and
tubes, swivel chairs and mattresses - all
of which will cost those damned Yankees
US$2.47 billion a year. In like manner,
the Mexicans and fixing up to retaliate
against the Americans. They haven't a list
yet, but they figure the Gringos will suffer
to the tune of $653 million before it's
all over.
How
did such good neighbours come to such an
impasse? It is fair to say that if any one
who is a party to this dispute was confronted
with the facts and imagined it to apply
to countries other than their own, there
would be widespread agreement, except perhaps
for the health and safety brigade that never
saw a regulation it didn't like.
But
apart from them, most would agree that the
situation is downright silly. But because
someone's ox is being gored, someone's industry
is being threatened. Politicians who would
never take the positions they do today adopt
opinions they would not adopt if the situation
did not apply to themselves and constituents
vital to their own political survival.
Republicans
- at least those without threatened and
now threatening constituents, who still
have majority in Congress, indicate they
may act to repeal the COOL law, but health
and safety consumer groups, with whom Democrats
are allied, say COOL provides "essential
information" for shoppers.
The
Canadian meat sector industries say the
rules have nothing to do with safety and
only add to expenses and have cut livestock
exports, driving some farmers out of business
and costing them more than US$1 billion
a year.
"Our
governments will be seeking authorisation
from the WTO to take retaliatory measures
against US exports," the Mexican and
Canadian ministers for trade and agriculture
said in a joint statement.
The
Republican chairman of the House of Representatives
Committee on Agriculture, Michael Conaway,
called for swift action repeal the offensive
law.
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