If you are paid to waffle then that is what you will do. For months the US has been hysterical about China's currency manipulation but are too scared to do anything about it. They can easily fix the exchange rate of dollar against the yuan at any level they want for all imports from China but this will make imports very expensive. Retail giants, such as WalMart, will go ballistic and the people will blame the government for the inflation. So instead they keep on hectoring China to raise the exchange rate of the yuan so that the US exports can increase while they can shrug their shoulders and blame China for the resulting inflation. Naturally China refuses to play the game. Moving on. Pascal Lamy, the Chief of WTO, is here in India for talks on how to resume progress of the Doha round which has been stalled for over two years. Rich countries want poorer countries to open their markets without committing to same level of openness themselves. They want to continue pouring subsidies on agricultural products making them artificially cheaper and want to export them freely to every country. Poorer countries got badly stung at the Uruguay round and are naturally playing hard ball. While all this waffling is going on countries are quietly negotiating Free Trade Agreements or FTAs in bilateral talks. The EU and NAFTA are huge FTAs which have been running for many years. India has already signed deals with Singapore and ASEAN countries and is in talks with the EU. Mr. Obama failed to conclude and agreement in Korea two weeks back. With rich countries struggling with recession protectionism will happen. The poor will pay the price of all the waffle.