Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has reiterated the call for equitable trading arrangements for vulnerable countries, noting that there is “something immoral” about a global system that subjects them to the same terms of trade as the developed world.
Addressing participants during a welcome event and cocktail reception for a three-day workshop on Trade and Climate Action: Shifting the Paradigm for a Just Transition and Sustainable Development, at Hilton Barbados on Tuesday, Ms. Mottley called for a deconstruction and reconstruction of the trading system.
Emphasising that trade was essential for citizens living in small island development states (SIDS), and was especially important as they lean towards a shift in thinking as SIDS to a large ocean state, Ms. Mottley added that it was trade that “will literally ride the waves and bring countries closer”.
“And, it is for this reason that we believe that the clarion calls that are being made for a just transition and a just industrial strategy with the Global South, cannot be relegated simply to being just another voice in the wind, but now has to be seen as a day of reckoning, whose time has come….” she underlined.
Ms. Mottley continued: “So, the problem is essentially not trade, the problem is the terms and conditions of trade…how do we deconstruct and reconstruct to have an environment that is suitable not just to small states like ourselves, but other large developing countries within the Global South. And how can we create a more equitable platform and how do we lower and level the cost of them? And how do we ensure that what is good in the North will also be good in the East, the West and the South. And therein lies the crux of the problem.
“The continued dominance of a few who helped to create these international institutions and who did it in their own image, regrettably, did not believe that there was need for a surgical approach to the creation of these institutions…. The notion that a one-size fits all rule being appropriate to govern our trade, and trade of large countries seems attractive to most, with very few exceptions to accommodate small states such as ourselves.”
The Prime Minister maintained that there was something “fundamentally immoral” about a global system that failed to recognise countries that lack the capacity to distort global trade in goods and services ought not to face the same rules as those who consider themselves to be in the middle and heavyweight sectors.
Ms. Mottley suggested that when the deconstruction and reconstruction were completed, it must be fair, facilitated a transfer of knowledge, and permitted a level playing field in the trading of goods and services.
She pointed out that Barbados chose to fight these battles lest we become shaped by a lack of policy and fiscal space that deprived it from securing future development of all citizens.
“I hope that as we deconstruct and reconstruct, we recognise that the hypocrisy that has allowed ‘do as I say, not as I do’ to be the dominant feature of the manner in which the G7 and the industrialised world has dealt generally with the Global South, will become a conversation piece with us, but not an aspect of our future.”