Questions

It's nice to have some astute commenters contributing here. Makes things more interesting.

Ron has stopped back by and has asked about Ukraine and the WTO. Good question. I also don't think much of the WTO for the US but it may not make all that much difference in practice. The US is the 800 pound gorilla and that means people want to sell there and have to sell there. That gives the US a lot of clout which ends up meaning that we tend to negotiate our way around the WTO when there is a problem. (Foreign sales corporations and the EU are one example.) That sounds like much the same result that would occur without it.

For Ukraine though, I think WTO accession would be a good thing. It would open up more markets for Ukrainian goods and allow for more competition here. (If anyone is looking to break the power of the oligarchs, more competition here is the way to do it.)

But it also imposes a kind of discipline on the goverment that it doesn't seem to be able to come up with on its own. To have to liberalize and do it in some sort of time frame self imposed or not has a tendency to give the government, at least parts of it, some focus. They need that.

So I think it a good thing.

Some respond that that accession would leave the Russians with more power here because they are the only ones who can stomach the risk here right now. (We think that overstated though, the risk part.) There is some truth to that but the response is more liberalization. That means more competition. Deals with it the same way as it would in dealing with the oligarchs.