Quotable: Lula on the WTO
Outgoing Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva let fly yesterday about Brazilian litigating prowess at the World Trade Organization: ‘We had a fight with the United States in the WTO on cotton and we won. We had a fight with them on sugar and we won,’ Lula said, referring to two cases in which ...
Outgoing Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva let fly yesterday about Brazilian litigating prowess at the World Trade Organization:
Outgoing Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva let fly yesterday about Brazilian litigating prowess at the World Trade Organization:
‘We had a fight with the United States in the WTO on cotton and we won. We had a fight with them on sugar and we won,’ Lula said, referring to two cases in which the World Trade Organisation had ruled in favour of Brazil and against U.S. farm aid. ‘In the olden days, they said don’t fight with the United States, they are very big,’ Lula said during a public works inauguration in the central Minas Gerais state. ‘Look, an elephant has a certain size. The trunk is as big as 10 rats but put a mouse near the elephant and see how the beast trembles and wets itself,’ he added.
The sight of a left-leaning, populist-inclined Latin American leader celebrating the WTO rather than railing against it will no doubt bring smiles to a few faces in Geneva.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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