Alas For Kampuchea!

According to a report from the globalist leftist Associated Press - written September 6th on the Yahoo Business section - Cambodia {also known as Kampuchea} has voted to join the infamous World Trade Organization (WTO). It would become the 148th member of this trade counterpart to the equally infamous UN.

Fifty of the 61 members of Cambodia's Senate voted to ratify the agreement. The current government of Prime Minister Hun Sen hopes that WTO membership will help protect their garment industry, which has been a mainstay of economic growth. The female-dominated industry provides four-fifths of the nation's exports.

This will only prove ill, in the long run, for Cambodia. They will slowly but surely lose their economic independence, then their political independence. The WTO, an adjunct of the UN, is doing the same to America and the nations of the so-called European Union. America will suffer even further if the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is passed by the US government.

And according to the latest issue of the Phnom Penh Post, heads of small and medium-sized businesses are fearful of going out of business thanks to WTO trade rules. They point to India, where many small enterprises - including rice milling, brick making, creation of spare parts and local electricity production - folded because of fair market access in other nations. A group of these business owners went to Bangalore, India to meet with their counterparts there, so as to learn new strategies to cope with life under WTO rules -- that is, if it is possible.

Distributism believes in fair trade, not the so-called "free trade" that globalists promote. It also believes in "trade minimalism", trading for what one aboslutely needs to keep an economy going, as well as staying on friendly economic terms with other nations. Tariffs should always remain flexible, neither too high - so as to avoid a "trade war" - nor too low, which harms domestic producers.

For those who can buy it, I suggest reading up on Hilaire Belloc's work Economics For Helen, specifically it's section on trade.

For those in Cambodia who may read this blog, let what happened today spur you on to get Cambodia out of the WTO - and the UN - and help your nation become Distributist.