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Brown issues warning on collapse of global trade
28 May 2009Global trade will collapse if the world does not take co-ordinated, concrete steps to finance trade flows, Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned today.
He said the global financial crisis had become a trade crisis, with the big exporting countries among the worst affected.
Japan lost half its export market in the first quarter of this year and Chinese exports have fallen 17% over the past year, resulting in 26 million lost jobs, he said.
“The simple truth is that trade is the most serious casualty of the global financial crisis, with a vicious circle emerging of falls in exports leading to falls in production and rising job losses, leading to further falls in consumer demand, exports, etc,” Brown writes in today's Wall Street Journal.
“There can be no recovery in the global economy without a revival of world trade. Trade was the driver of post-war recovery in Japan, Germany, the rest of Europe and the United States, and the engine of growth in Asia in recent decades.”
In order to restore growth, Brown proposes a series of steps, including a massive injection of funding to finance trade flows. At the G20 summit Britain hosted in early April, governments agreed to provide $250 billion (£156.9 billion) of trade financing in 2009-11.
“While credit markets have loosened up, our second step must be to ensure that governments and international organisations honour the commitments they made,” Brown said.
Reader views (16)
You just don't get it Gordon Brown. STOP worrying about things outside your control. You can not and will not save the world. Focus on your country, focus on UK, focus on the economy.
- Max, Isleworth, 29/05/2009 08:39
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Has Gordon Brown ever made a speech that didn't have the word "Global" in it?
This is getting ridiculous now. Global, global, global ( deep breath) ...global, global, global.
Go away and join a globalist/internationalist party Gordon Brown and let the British people run their own affairs!
- Londoner, London, England, 28/05/2009 23:03
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Ruin the UK economy and then save the world.
Is that the plan?
He's got a pressing timetable before the men in white coats grab him.
- Ralph Jolly, chicago usa, 28/05/2009 15:49
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Certain people would choose the Captain of the Titanic again and again even if on each ground hog occasion they lost their lives because he drove the ship at full speed into ice and icebergs resulting in it and most of the rich and poor souls aboard to the bottom of the Atlantic. It must be this blind faith or lack of vision/knowledge that still drives the 20% that still have faith in this man who actually admits he was blind sided by the crisis when all the experts I have read for years before including Weiss (set up Bank Rating Agency)and McCalvaney (adviser to industrialists) and others including Reece Mogg. These men warned about the approaching crisis way back. A blind man could see it. I did TV Programs telling people. Gordon Brown did nothing to build up our reserves, no he sold them at the hight of a boom and taxed everything to pay for the hole in his budget because he was overspending. Is it ignorance that prevents these people from seeing the disaster this man has wrought. Wake up, smell the roses. Write, email, visit to your MP of whatever party and tell him for the good of the nation he must demand an election. Get your friends before this nation collapses. Whole armies in history havent done the damage this man has done to this once great nation.
- Peter, Camberley UK, 28/05/2009 15:13
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Gordon cannot stop spending other people's money.
We are now witness to otherwise bankrupt nations with contracting economies planning to re-spend themselves back into prosperity on borrowed money — money to be borrowed from themselves.
The US, the UK and Japan — the economic troika of the living dead — are all engaged in quantitative easing and are now in the last stages of capital destruction and economic collapse.
- Antonia H, Newcastle, 28/05/2009 14:48
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"Oh is it the fault caused "by the world" again Crash Gordon? Always everyone else not him..."
You will find Stevie, that Presidents Obama, Sarkozy, Berlusconi and countless other world leaders have endorsed Mr Brown's advice and actions, by reccommending their implementation in their own countries. The recession was triggered in the USA and everyone accepts that. This is not the time to hand over the reins yo an inexperienced show-pony, whether his name is Clegg or Cameron.
- Keith Price, Luton, England, 28/05/2009 14:27
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Next year national insurance contributions for everybody and income tax for the higher paid will increase. Perhaps Gordon Brown will tell us how such tax rises will help improve the dire state of our economy - the reality is that every time tax goes up there is less money available for goods and services to be bought. Gordon just does not get it and should be sacked now for gross incompetence.
- Simon Ellis, London NW2, 28/05/2009 13:55
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Who would listen to anything this fool has to say, except, of course, his resignation speech.
- Dee Jay, Fleet Hampshire, 28/05/2009 13:27
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It is very sad that Gordon Brown is still in public office - His track record of failed predictions and lack of preparation for subsequent events disqualifies him from having a voice that any one is prepared to listen to - It's a shame that the political process allows him to remain and manipulate and leave us all exposed to terrible consequences in the months after his inevitable removal - This is not about party politics, this is about the collapse of our economy and what is going to be done about it. Nothing is being done at the moment - Speeches won't solve anything!
- Des Lewis, london, 28/05/2009 12:44
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Oh is it the fault caused "by the world" again Crash Gordon? Always everyone else not him...
- Steveo, London NW1, 28/05/2009 12:29
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Brown would know about failures. He appointed Mad Mandleson Lord Fraudloan who was meant to settle the EU part of the Trade Round. He failed totally, perhaps moreinterested in shady Russians, and beach boys. Brown put this failed fraudster in charge of UK business!!
Brown's 'Regulation Light' of UK banking was the most stupid action of any UK public figure in the UK's economic history. He ordered no checking of banks business plans. Result unprecedented collapse.
Brown is to finance and economics, as cows are to swimming. Disaster, under McBride style cunning. His moral mask was ripped away. His economic mask was torn off.
Brown over-maxed the UK credit card. He spent his rich inheritance. He took as much extra as he could grab, including all future private pensions. His inept sale of UK gold reserves at firesale prices is a lesson in how not to sell anything. He hiked the house boom by faking the UK inflation measure far too low so interest rates were too low.
His boast he had 'ended boom and bust' indicates mental inbalance, delusion and megalomania. No one has ended the economic cycle. Brown made the UK cycle both much worse by the hike up in asset prices, he also made the recovery far harder by a huge state burden on the economy.
Brown pays the same amount on interest for his UK State loans as he does on UK defence. Sorry, he made us pay that. Even the blindest can see how bad he is.
- John, birmingham uk, 28/05/2009 12:11
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Keith Price from Luton: your spelling (or your typing) is as bad as your political & economic judgement. Wake up to the reality of failed socialist economic policy. Every one of the six Labour administrations we've had since Labour first came to power in 1924 has ended with some form of economic disaster. Brown is no different, he's going to leave us at the next General Election with the worst economic environment we've ever had, and saddle the next generation with massive debt problems.
- Malcolm, London, 28/05/2009 11:55
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Is Mr Brown who should be renamed Mr Bankrupt implying once more that people and states should start borrow like he is doing to finance trade. The man is not well he is trying to bankrupt the whole world with more debt and borrowing. Call an election Mister Brown.
- Nicholas, LARNACA-CYPRUS, 28/05/2009 11:19
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The failure of the free trade system is solely down to the manipulation of the ideal by the Politicos worried about re-election. Anyone with half a brain saw that the growth was driven by the availability of unrealistically priced Chinese goods.
Free trade works, by supply and demand, the good succeeding the bad failing. Interfering with that for short term political gain causes long term damage that is hard to repair.
Gordon Brown was well aware of this when he set out to delude the UK public about the County’s finances so he could spend all our reserves on pet projects we could not afford. Now the inevitable downturn has arrived he has taken to tying down our children and their children down with debt that will sap their quality of life for a generation to come.
There can be a quick return, if the Political Class stop their manipulation and let the markets get on with it.
- Ian, Reading, England, 28/05/2009 10:44
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As the PM and former Finance Minister of a bankrupt country, what possesses Brown to propose anything to the rest of the world ?
- Susie, Paris, 28/05/2009 10:24
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Howvever bad the world economy is at the moment, Gordon Brown is by far the best man to bribg us long-kasting recocery. This is not the time to hand over the reins yo an inexperienced show-pony, whether his name is Clegg or Cameron.
- Keith Price, Luton, England, 28/05/2009 10:21
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