G20, Protectionism, PayPal & iTunes

[Pixual]

So, they (G20) pledged an end to protectionism and want to stimulate world trade in a fair and sustainable manner with an injection of $1trillion.

Does this mean that we South Africans will be able to get PayPal accounts that let us sell to the world? Will we finally be able to purchase our music at iTunes and not have to pay nearly double for it?

Or is this all just more political posturing?

What are your thoughts?

 

[km2]

No, more likely they'll clamp down even further on inter-country PayPal transfers in the name of "regulating banking" and preventing "international tax evasion".

Removing protectionism doesn't help if the music/movie companies don't want to sell to us. Protectionism can only remove barriers that South Africa sets up against those companies selling here. It can't prevent pure stupidity.

 

[ZA.Schmidt]

No, more likely they'll clamp down even further on inter-country PayPal transfers in the name of "regulating banking" and preventing "international tax evasion".

Many things were to blame for the economic crisis, but tax evasion wasn't one of them. It's more likely they'll loosen up on such laws to stimulate trade a bit.

 

[km2]

Many things were to blame for the economic crisis, but tax evasion wasn't one of them. It's more likely they'll loosen up on such laws to stimulate trade a bit.

No, but they're using the global financial crisis and the backlash against "greedy, rich bankers" as a pretext to tighten up requirements on tax evasion. Now PayPal isn't included there, but it provides easy international transfers with very little oversight so could quickly find itself on the wrong side of global sentiment. For a number of years it had been playing a game where it tried to avoid being a bank to avoid regulatory oversight, but eventually it become a bank in Luxembourg, one of the countries on the EUs list of non-squeaky clean countries.

Despite what all these leaders are publicly committed to, and the general consensus that it helped lead to the severity of the Great Depression, protectionism is very much on the rise at the moment. When unemployment in a country is rising rapidly "shipping jobs overseas" just looks unpalatable whichever way you spin it.