Well Done Mandy

China seems to be scaring the shit of just about everyone at the moment; a few weeks ago rabid US congressman were to be seen scrambling around Washington lobbying against a threatened Chinese takeover of Unocal on the ground that it would threaten "national security".

Meanwhile over here in "Yurp", the EU has hastily imposed an import quota on the import of Chinese textiles; helpfully, retaillers in the UK and Europe weren't (apparently) properly informed. Thus huge stockpiles of trousers, bed linen and the like are already piling up in warehouses unable to reach consumers.

The only up-side to this is that the buck must inevitably rest with Tony's man-who-can (or indeed can't) in Brussels, the legendarily smug Peter "Hinduja" Mandelson, the EU Commissioner for Trade.

One of the main problems with the EU is that - without anything resembling effective democratic accountability, it tends to be exceptionally prone to well-heeled lobby groups (known in English criminal law as 'corruption'). Step forward large textile firms based in France and Spain, who insist they need to be 'protected' from the surging Chinese hoards. But with British consumers facing a potentially catastrophic shortage of cheap Tesco jeans and M&S sweaters, will the retaillers opt for higher cost factories in Western Europe ?

Of course not. As one newspaper reported today :

"Tesco, the UK’s largest grocer, which sold around £700 million worth of clothes in Britain last year, said it was able to source goods from other areas such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Turkey and that it did not expect its shoppers to be affected."

So the closest the quota would seem to get to protecting the rag trade within the EU is Turkey (enough, you would think, to put at least the French off). No no no, said an EU spokesman :

"This is not just another standard pork-barrel protectionist measure. The EU also considered the effect the Chinese market share was having on other developing countries who have historically been dependent on our market. Who will protect jobs in Tunisia and Morocco ?".

Thank heavens the developing world (barring China) has the EU to look after its interests.

One wonders whether this quite extraordinary announcement will herald a new era of concern for the third world, especially reforming farm subsidies (expicitly designed to keep small farmers in the EU richer than their third world counterparts - no-one in Africa benefits from the "French social model"). I'm not holding my breath.

Of course the UK government and the EU might use this opportunity to apply some leaverage over Beijing to improve its abysmal human rights record; but what with our pragmatic support for 'Idi Amin lite' in Uzbekistan and the fact that several of our soldiers are currently on trial for war-crimes, you have to wonder whether we have the authority...moral or political.

As a final thought - I wonder if the Peter's friends the Hinduja brothers have any interest in Indian textile firms - now that really would be too good to be true.