Cancun battle lines drawn
Friends or foes
Haribo chews on enterprise software deal

Five hot trends

Trade wars

Cancun battle lines drawn

Trade in agriculture and foodstuffs, access to markets and intellectual property rights are just three of the obstacles facing negotiators at the World Trade Organisation’s meeting in Cancun today.

Prospects for an amicable event are small. The US and Europe are suing each other over the EU’s policy on genetically modified foods; Australia is fighting the EU for access to its markets; developing countries want developed countries to stop subsidising exports that destroy local farmers’ livelihoods, among other quarrels.

There is no doubt that trade improves everyone’s living standard. But worldwide there appears to be an inverse relationship between farmers’ political power and the economic value of their products.

But free trade is honoured more in the breach than the practice. Nearly all governments restrict access to goods and markets with the aim of protecting local jobs. But this is contrary to entrepreneurs’ desire to use comparative economic advantages efficiently. Hence the tension between governments, which have a nominal duty to protect their citizens, corporations, which want free access to markets for goods and finance, and people, who want goods and jobs.

With the US seeking help in Iraq, it will be interesting to see if and when this translates into freer access to US markets for non-US producers.

Friends or foes

Friends in shooting wars, foes in trade wars. That seems to be the US position with respect to Europe following the revelation of a concerted campaign waged by the US government on behalf of its chemical industries against Europe’s new chemicals policy, REACH.

A new report released today by the US-based Environmental Health Fund is based on internal government documents. These show that the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department, Commerce Department and Office of US Trade Representative tried to weaken EU chemical policy reforms on behalf of the US chemical industry.

"This report paints a chilling picture of how the Bush Administration is intervening in the regulatory process of sovereign nations at the behest of the industry. As these documents show, the US government essentially operated as a branch office of the chemical industry," said Dr Joe DiGangi, author of the report. "This merits a full Congressional investigation into the corporate influence over government actions at the relevant agencies and raises questions about the objectives of US foreign policy."

Health and environment groups claim the EU reforms will benefit public health. REACH, for Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals, requires industry to provide basic health and environmental data for thousands of chemicals now on the market that have never been properly evaluated. Some of these are found in human body tissue and breast milk. Research indicates that exposures to even low doses of certain chemicals can result in profound but subtle effects including birth defects, reproductive disorders, and neurological abnormalities.

The news comes as a new report from Australia condemns the EU for using trade threats to “push a green agenda” that blocks imports of goods from developing countries such as Australia.

“The EU has… unilaterally… restricted imports of food, textiles and timber and is planning similar rules for chemicals and electronic goods," said report author Alan Oxley, a former GATT ambassador for Australia.

Oxley accused European governments of using trade sanctions because “they protect their own producers and it pleases NGOs like Greenpeace, Oxfam and the World Wildlife Fund who are anti-free trade".

"They don't seem to care that it threatens the very fundamentals of the global trading system and its capacity to increase prosperity in the global economy", he complained.

Business

Haribo chews on enterprise software deal

Haribo, the world's leading supplier and manufacturer of fruit gums, liquorices and candy foam is to pilot use of Movex, Intentia's Java-based collaborative enterprise application, at its UK operations in Dunhills before implementing it in its German sites.

Haribo is looking to manage the purchasing, development, production, logistics, quality control, sales, finances and controlling business processes via Movex.

Trends

Five hot trends

Fast Company magazine, one of the survivors of the dotcom boom and bust, has come up with five trends it spotted as likely to have a big impact on they way we do things.

3-D printing Great for prototyping and incremental design, it allows you to print objects made of wax or plastic in minutes, letting you try design ideas in client meetings while they wait.

Biosimulation These are computerised models of physical and chemical processes, typically human, that let you test drugs and other compounds in a fraction of the time and cost of real time, real life tests. Software gurus and their clients hope they will slash the $800-1000m cost of bringing a new drug to market.

Autonomic computers Just what we all need, computer systems that know enough about themselves and their environments to fix themselves when things start to go wrong. Very handy if they could also replicate their parts when they wear out and adjust to new environments as they change. 

On-site power generation Thanks to hydrogen-powered fuel cells, we'll all be selling electricity to the grid from our back yards.

Radio frequency identification devices  Glad I'm not waiting for Fast Company to catch up with the MIT-based project, which is now about 10 years old and about to go seriously commercial when Wal-Mart confirms its order to 500m of the tags, expected this year. Small problem - do you want your underwear telling every scanner where it's been?