The Cotton Wars
NPR's Planet Money has posted a great new audible podcast and blog entry on The Cotton Wars about US subsidies to Cotton farmers. It's a journalistic investigation and a great introduction to the political economy of the issues and how trade agreements and WTO enforcement (or lack thereof) occurs in practice.
The narrative follows the history behind a number of recent successful complaints that Brazil (a major cotton producer in their own right) has filed against and appeals to the World Trade Organization claiming that the United States is violating it's own previous trade treaty commitments because of the ways it implements these subsidies. Colorful characters on both sides of the debate are interviewed.
We will spend a considerable amount of time looking at the topic of Agricultural Export Subsidies, which is one of the main topics in Chapter 10 of the textbook. International organizations such as Oxfam claim that US cotton subsidies do more harm (to small cotton farmers in places like Africa) than any other trade program, and large countries like Brazil protest loudly. I'm going to build a problem set around this topic and this particular podcast. So take notes as you listen.
If you haven't heard the NPR Planet Money weekly podcasts before, I recommend them highly. They're presented in accessible language (you don't need to have taken economics to understand) yet they are almost always interesting enough to sustain the interest even of those who do know a good deal of economics. They frequently interview prominent economists who they really push to explain things in clear jargon-free terms.
Look at their other podcasts and blog entries on Trade. For instance the one on buttons (the shifting of button production overseas) was really good. I listen to them weekly
You can listen to the podcasts on the website at the link above or download it to many mobile devices with a podcast player service (e.g. iTunes for the ipod/iphone, google listen for Android devices, etc).
The narrative follows the history behind a number of recent successful complaints that Brazil (a major cotton producer in their own right) has filed against and appeals to the World Trade Organization claiming that the United States is violating it's own previous trade treaty commitments because of the ways it implements these subsidies. Colorful characters on both sides of the debate are interviewed.
We will spend a considerable amount of time looking at the topic of Agricultural Export Subsidies, which is one of the main topics in Chapter 10 of the textbook. International organizations such as Oxfam claim that US cotton subsidies do more harm (to small cotton farmers in places like Africa) than any other trade program, and large countries like Brazil protest loudly. I'm going to build a problem set around this topic and this particular podcast. So take notes as you listen.
If you haven't heard the NPR Planet Money weekly podcasts before, I recommend them highly. They're presented in accessible language (you don't need to have taken economics to understand) yet they are almost always interesting enough to sustain the interest even of those who do know a good deal of economics. They frequently interview prominent economists who they really push to explain things in clear jargon-free terms.
Look at their other podcasts and blog entries on Trade. For instance the one on buttons (the shifting of button production overseas) was really good. I listen to them weekly
You can listen to the podcasts on the website at the link above or download it to many mobile devices with a podcast player service (e.g. iTunes for the ipod/iphone, google listen for Android devices, etc).
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