Related Issues

Can Globalization ‘Go Social’?

• In a world continuing to harden socially because of rapid and unsettling modernizations, could prevailing thinking about globalization shift toward the social?

The Changing Geography of Cheap Labor

• Westerners long enjoying global economic superiority rationally accept the advantages of outsourcing jobs. But now the trend appears to have made life more worrisome for white-collar workers at home

A landmark World Trade Organization ruling at the end of April that US cotton subsidies cause artificially low international prices is leading to predictions that cotton producers from Brazil to Western Africa may now have an incentive to increase production and get what they call a fair price for their crops. While wealthy-country farmers won't give in to the WTO without a fight, persistent developing-country and nongovernmental- organization activism may have sparked the beginning of an end to Western supremacy over world trade negotiations

Hot under the collar: A 22-year-old Brazilian cotton picker in Leme, 150 kilometers north of Sao Paulo. AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini.

Brazen Brazil picks away at agricultural subsidies Carlos Castilho reports from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil In the long run, government payments fail West’s farmers, too R. Dennis Olson comments from Minneapolis, US US to hold to best possible trade advantage PR from Chairman Bob Goodlatte, US House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture Oxfam oxygenates debate on European export subsidies Peter Orne comments from Boston Letter Mr. Bush, can this many diplomats be wrong? In a letter to President Bush, dozens of former US diplomats to the Middle East send a clear message to the commander-in-chief