From Remember Doha to Europe after May 6

Remember Doha (the Doha Round of WTO talks)? What happened to it?

Or even "Doha Lite"?

Some 6 years ago (December 2006), before the subprime led crisis, the Euro crisis, a few years after the dotcom crisis (bubble), and before the real estate bubbles in the US, Ireland and Spain (et al), before the global oil and staple foods prices crisis, I was proposing that: The "kingdom" of economic liberalism is not "grounded" that well on this earth! The ongoing troubles of the Doha Round of world trade talks are evidence to that. What do people prefer, to work as blacksmiths in a fair trade based job market or as knights in a free market based job market? (from my post "The Pirates of the Globalean and the curse of liberalism?", 4/12/2006).

The "rest of the wordl" compared to the US and the EU (and its (so they think) developed grand economies of the G7 (UK, Germany, France and Italy)) plus Japan and Canada, has been claiming its fair share on world GDP and wealth in general. That means (see rough calculations in my recent post, 3/2/2012: "If GDP per capita in USA, EU, China, India was to converge then ...") a decline in the US and EU's share of the world GDP and their GDPs per capita. Which is already happening and one can expect acceleration in the near future, unless:

As I have argued in many posts and tweets, the WTO "global trade league" does not seem to work for the US and the EU anymore since China entered (December 2001) and showed its communist-capitalist muscle. The troubles of the WTO talks in 2003 in Cancun prompted the EU, the US and others to sign bilateral trade (and sometimes wider "economic" or even wider) agreements. Also, it prompted the establishment of new or the evolution of existing "regional" entities (see eg ASEAN, ASEAN-China, Mercsur and UNASUR, even the African Union project) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) aka Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement.  Not to forget NAFTA and CAFTA. And the pan-American free trade area that Bush tried to promote but fell flat on its (his) face in Mar Del Plata at the 4th Summit of the Americas in November 2005. Which was by the way followed a month later, by another major fail of the WTO Doha Round of talks in the 6th WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, 13–18 December 2005.

Political science and politics have developed in recent centuries different models for the re-distribution of wealth inside national confines. Now they have to deal wit it at global level-framework, not national. No wonder many are fighting against a world government (with a world parliament) tooth and nail! Even at the European level, the Euro crisis is partly a crisis of redistribution of wealth at European level or even the mere development of "EU interest" or "Eurozone interest" instead of national interest!

No wonder that an oxymoronic anti-globalist (and even anti-EU) libertarian anti-tax, anti-state, austerity-hawkish political philosophy has evolved. How does one blend libertarianism with nationalism, well that is a political "bartender's" secret that still eludes me.

So, are the social democrats or the left of center more generally ready to govern in Europe? Yes, as long as it finds a political model for EU or Eurozone "interest". The same applies to the centrists in Europe (who are they? that is another post). The conservatives are torn between the German ordoliberal and the classic or neo liberal thinking dogmas (eg the UK Tories). Against a backdrop of the Belgian issue between Vlaanderen and Wallonie or the after-math of the German re-unification pains of the 1990s that still linger to some extent.

Are the German Pirates a view of things to come in European politics? Too early to tell.

What will happen in the Eurzone and the EU if Hollande breaks up the Merkozy affair on May 6? Well, on verra, but can it be worse than the existing situation (of Merkozian politics and economics)? Nein, non. ochi.