The trade mission delusion

David Cameron has returned from what was a bit of a war-and-peace tour
of East Asia. Taking arms dealers to Indonesia one day, posing with Aung San Suu Kyi the next. In today’s Sunday Telegraph he writes an almost-defensive piece about it all:

‘With the eurozone producing sluggish growth, we simply can’t rely on trade with Europe to generate the jobs and growth we need. We need to look south and east and do a much better job of winning business in places such as China, India, the Gulf, Africa and South America. That’s why I have been leading trade missions to some of the fastest growing parts of the world, including last week’s visit to Japan and south-east Asia.’



Helping the recovery is a noble cause, but one based on the questionable premise that trade missions led by politicians make a blind bit of difference. In the Nixon-to-China era, when it was harde for companies to break in to their target markets and make contacts, such visits helped.