LIMA, Peru - The U.S.-led campaign to break down trade barriers in the past decade has been perceived as "a one-way street" benefiting rich nations and international corporations, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said.
Speaking at a meeting of international gold producers in the Peruvian capital, Gorbachev said Friday that the United States and other western nations misinterpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory for capitalism.
Now, the United States must listen to growing criticism that its economic policy is "a one-way street that hasn't benefited 80 percent of the people," he said.
Gorbachev, who rose to power in 1985, launched reforms to the communist Soviet Union that led to its collapse — and the end of the Cold War — in December 1991.
Just over two years later, the United States, Canada and Mexico formed the North American Free Trade Agreement to dissolve trade barriers on the continent. The member nations have since proposed the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a hemisphere-wide bloc of 34 nations.
But concerns growing out of NAFTA, including rich nations' refusal to cut agricultural subsidies, are holding up progress on FTAA negotiations.
While the talks stall, the United States has pursued one-on-one free trade agreements.
"At a time when the world is so interrelated it is myopic to set national interests so far ahead of world problems," Gorbachev said.
The former Soviet leader said that free-trade economic policies set in Washington have led to "uncontrolled globalization" that mainly benefits "those who had the advantages in the first place."
Gorbachev also criticized the Bush administration for ignoring world opinion to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing greenhouse gases worldwide, on the grounds that it would hurt the U.S. economy.
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