A Stitch in Haste

Your tax dollars at work -- causing Africans to remain stuck in poverty:

After five years of negotiations to reduce barriers to international trade, global trade talks broke down today when the United States and the European Union failed to agree to reduce farm subsidies and protective tariffs.
...
Developing nations are demanding that rich nations reduce the high tariffs they use to protect their farmers from low-cost foreign competition, and to reduce the billions they spend annually subsidizing farmers. Only then, the developing nations say, can they open their own markets to more Western manufactured goods and services.

And remember, the goal of farm subsidies -- which do not always go to farmers -- is often to keep agricultural prices high (i.e., to make you pay more) by bribing farmers -- who are not always farmers -- not to produce, to restrict supply. Which the government can only do if tariffs shut out other nations from our markets.

Higher taxes, higher prices, impoverished Africans. Lovely.

And what, meanwhile, are the Africans going to do about it?

But most importantly we need to realize that we should now look to Asian markets and China since the big boys (Western countries) are not ready," Erastus Mwencha, general secretary of [the] Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), told Reuters.

Remind me again how forcing Africa to sell their low-priced exports to China and not us, while keeping our prices artificially high through taxes, will help our economic position relative to China?

Higher taxes, higher prices, impoverished Africans ... and another economic advantage for China. Lovelier.