WORLD TRADE TALKS FAIL, poor hardest hit, reports Ron Bailey:

The only winners at Cancun are the vested interests such as moribund protected industries, highly subsidized rich country farmers, and anti-globalization ideologues. The real losers are hundreds of millions of poor people who would have benefited from the jobs, the higher incomes and lower prices that liberalized trade brings.

Richard Tren, meanwhile, comments:

The failure of the Cancun meeting means that progress towards trade liberalisation is even further away than it was. If African countries want to escape poverty they have to embrace open markets and free trade. Unfortunately among the negotiators there seems to be an almost unanimous attitude that trade is a zero — or even negative — sum game and that liberalisation only ever incurs costs, never benefits.

It’s a very unfortunate day.