Philippe Legrain

My former boss and good friend Mike Moore has written an excellent piece about prospects for the Doha Round, which is unfortunately only available to FT.com subscribers until Mike publishes it on his own website. Noting that ‘If you only read the headlines you would be forgiven for thinking the Doha development trade round had [...]

Prospect, July 2006. Shareholder capitalism finally makes it into law. And the NGO’s flawed accountability charter shows they don’t practice what they preach

President Bush rarely intervenes directly in the WTO debate. So it is a sign of how the White House is ratcheting up the pressure for an ambitious Doha Round deal that he talked about it at some length in a speech this week: Now we’re confronted with a really good opportunity, by the way, to [...]

In a comment on my recent post on the contribution of trade liberalisation to Asia’s success, Jim takes issue with my contention that China and India are very powerful examples of the benefits of liberalisation: before they started their reforms, growth was slow, but as they have opened up their economies, growth has accelerated. He [...]

Time is running out for the Doha Round. It’s been said so many times, but this time it really is true. To see why, count back from July 2007. That is when President Bush’s fast-track authority, which forces Congress to vote on trade deals without the possibility of amending them, is due to expire. With [...]

The AFL-CIO, America’s biggest trade-union federation, is petitioning the Bush administration to impose economic sanctions against China for violations of workers’ rights. The unions claim that the exploitation of Chinese workers is not only morally repugnant, but also economically damaging, alleging that it has cost 1.2 million US workers their jobs. They say this amounts [...]

As I explained in a recent post, the notion that the IMF can act as a global economic policeman is pure fantasy. But that won’t stop the Fund from trying. It is sending crack teams to the US, the eurozone, Japan, China and Saudi Arabia to examine how their economies contribute to the worrying global [...]

Eleven international NGOs have signed up to a new accountability charter, which says We recognise that transparency and accountability are essential to good governance,whether by governments, businesses or non-profit organisations. Wherever we operate, we seek to ensure that the high standards which we demand of others are also respected in our own organisations… We agree [...]

I don’t usually have a problem with foreign companies taking over British ones, or with sourcing supplies abroad. But the British government should block any move by Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned monopoly gas exporter, to buy Centrica, which owns British Gas and is the UK’s biggest gas distributor.

In a thoughtful comment on my recent Doha post, Matthew argues that It is simply not the case that the enormous growth of the Asia tigers is evidence of the efficacy of free trade because most of those economies were protected behind trade barriers and currency controls for most of their development and still are. [...]

NGOs demand that governments, businesses and international organisations be open and accountable for their actions. Hear, hear. But what about NGOs themselves? The likes of Oxfam and Greenpeace fall far short of the standards on which they rightly insist in others. These self-appointed guardians of global rectitude are scarcely models of transparency and accountability – [...]

Peter Mandelson, the EU’s trade commissioner, has announced a review of anti-dumping measures. These seek to protect Europeans from imports that the Commission deems unfairly cheap. Personally, I think low-cost foreign products are one of the boons of globalisation – allowing the pound in your pocket to stretch further – as well as being particularly [...]