Politics and trade

I hate politics but there is no avoiding the fact that they affect all aspects of life and trade in one way or another. Take the US beef export situation. US politicians are currently trying to get a resumption of unrestricted beef exports into South Korea. If South Korea refuses to play ball, the proposed free trade agreement will not be put forward to Congress. 'We made it clear all along - I personally made it clear, the President of the United States made it clear to the President of Korea - that unless and until they reopen their market in full to US beef exports, we aren't even going to submit this FTA to Congress, because we know Congress just isn't going to act on it', US Trade Ambassador Susan Schwab told the radio station AgriTalk. According to Meatingplace.com (a very interesting and informative website), Schwab has said that she expects to see action from Korea by late September. 'I want to see beef moving. I want more than commitments. I want it done.' While things initially appeared to be progressing, when the Lotte Mart discount chain offered US beef for sale at nearly half the price of domestic beef, the housewives were delighted but local farmers and activists threw cattle dung on the floors of some of the stores. Some protestors even sought to purchase US beef and burn it outside stores. After police were called in to restrain the protestors, Lotte Mart elected to suspend sales at seven of their 53 stores. Undeterred, since then a further twenty odd stores have announced they would carry US beef from August 9. However, this progress came near to being derailed towards the end of July when Seoul discovered two illegal packages of US ribs. South Korea reacted with a temporary suspension of imports from the plants involved. The suppliers are claiming human error and procedures are being reviewed. At the end of the day, I have to ask myself how US beef freighted to South Korea can be retailed at almost half the price of Korean beef and a third of the price of Australian beef. Another political issue is that facing China in the run up to the next Olympics. We have all read the reports of mounting pollution in the country. It is so bad in some places that people are dying from the effects. In a country which witnessed the massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square a few years back, it is surprising to learn that the people feel so strongly about the issue they are once more mounting protests. The head of China's environmental agency has blamed a rising number of riots, demonstrations and petitions across the country on public anger at pollution. An expected World Bank report is said to contain the opinion that around 500,000 people each year die in China as a result of air and water pollution. On the one hand Beijing is trying to improve the situation by tightening legislation and increasing penalties, and on the other there is the strongly-held belief that local officials turn a blind eye when plants construct secret pipelines to discharge polluting chemicals or release toxins when the local people are asleep. A recent inspection of firms along the Yellow, Yangtze and other major rivers and lakes found that 44% had violated environmental laws and almost half of the 75 wastewater treatment facilities had either underperformed or had not worked at all. The environmental agency said that more than a quarter of the seven main river systems were so polluted that the water was unfit for human contact. One thing is for certain, the state government will go to great lengths to clean up Beijing in readiness for the Olympic Games and they will not even consider the possibility that they may fail. This simply cannot be countenanced. And one obvious target for cleaning up is the tanning industry. On a smaller scale, we are publishing a report in this issue on Tunisian tanneries. Here it is quite clear that many of the treatment plants are working at less than optimum rates and the end result is the discharge of untreated effluent. 82% of tanneries have been fined.