Last week at the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, the Bush administration made a major policy shift in the U.S. approach to globalization. While the President’s comments sound compassionate and economically stabilizing, his vision will further distance the rich from the poor. The pledge of a 50 percent increase, or $10 billion, in American foreign aid over three years is a step in the right direction.

While this is an improvement on throwing money at friends in a Cold War system of rewarding political loyalty rather than economic responsibility, it still undermines global freedom.The IMF and World Bank, controlled by developed nations, reward nations for disregarding local conditions in favor of mimicking a U.S. model and further dismantling obstacles to free trade. While Bush said, “to be serious about fighting poverty, we must be serious about expanding trade,” the reforms as stated further consolidate developed nations’ free market advantage and influence.

“Free” trade allows the strong to survive, and in a global system, strong nations are countries whose economic lifeblood is multinational companies that can produce efficiently on a huge scale with cheap labor. What the Monterrey conference does is to further enable the United States to enter and undersell local markets. While this may serve U.S. interests in the short run, our leaders shouldn’t pretend it will lessen global poverty and therefore serve our interests in the long run.

To be serious about fighting poverty, we must be serious about structuring systems that allow nations to use global tools to make decisions, not create a global market that forces them to make cookie-cutter reforms based on rich nations’ dictates. While Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill acknowledges some of these stock criticisms, he and the administration are further centralizing decisions in a World Bank and IMF which erode national decision-making.

The IMF and World Bank should be advisory councils that nations can be free to circumvent, not de facto rulers where unrepresented constituents’ welfare is decided by United States and European policy-makers. They have acknowledged at the Monterrey summit that trickle-down aid doesn’t work; it’s time to see that trickle-down decision-making erodes the very global freedom and accountability the Bush administration is calling for.

Katherine Westholm

Junior

History