{"id":272670,"date":"2016-10-13T03:54:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T03:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/free-trade-meets-populism-at-the-imf\/"},"modified":"2016-10-13T03:54:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T03:54:18","slug":"free-trade-meets-populism-at-the-imf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/free-trade-meets-populism-at-the-imf\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Trade Meets Populism at the IMF"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_87529\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-87529\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/10\/5115936898_d756b3cedf_z.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Daniel Lobo | CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"383\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/10\/5115936898_d756b3cedf_z.jpg 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/10\/5115936898_d756b3cedf_z-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by Daniel Lobo | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I was taken by surprise by the headline of the\u00a0<em>Latin American Herald Tribune<\/em>:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.laht.com\/article.asp?ArticleId=2422755&amp;CategoryId=12396&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+laht%2Fmailer+%28Latin+American+Herald+Tribune%29\">Global Elites Insist on Greater Trade Openness to Halt Populism<\/a>. The article reports on the IMF general assembly held in Washington over the weekend and it shows just how disconcerted the \u201cglobal elites\u201d are by the rising tide of disenchantment with the neoliberal gospel not only in the Global South, but in the Center (Europe and the United States) as well. But why all the worry? I thought history ended in 1989, the progressive cycle is now ending in Latin America, and globalization was the fulfillment of the World Spirit.<\/p>\n<p>The headline suggestions that the \u201cglobal elites\u201d are grappling with what appears to be a contradiction. If \u201cpopulism\u201d (a term that is probably being used here in a pejorative way) itself is anti-free trade, how can more free trade cure the disease that provokes anti-neoliberal populism?<\/p>\n<p>The article quotes IMF head, Christine Lagarde about her prescription for the \u201cmediocre\u201d world economy that is causing the populist disaffection:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe first priority for inclusive growth is to escape the \u2018new mediocre\u2019 of low growth, low employment, and low wages. That means using all policy tools \u2013 monetary, fiscal, and structural: to maximize the synergies within countries \u2013 and amplify the impact though coordination across countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, \u201call policy tools\u201d likely refers here to those tools acceptable to the IMF,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/10\/12\/free-trade-meets-populism-at-the-imf\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Daniel Lobo | CC BY 2.0 I was taken by surprise by the headline of the\u00a0Latin American Herald Tribune:\u00a0Global Elites Insist on Greater Trade Openness to Halt Populism. The article reports on the IMF general assembly held in Washington over the weekend and it shows just how disconcerted the \u201cglobal elites\u201d are by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-272670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}