Avoid protectionism, Brown to tell US

Wednesday, March 4: British PM Gordon Brown will use his address to both houses of Congress today to urge Senators and Congressmen to resist protectionism, despite popular pressure on the US lawmakers to defend American jobs as the recession deepens.

"I am going to say to Congress: 'Seize the moment when the whole of the world wants to work with America'," Brown told reporters in Washington on Tuesday. "This is a moment where we can't solve the problems of the banking system without us all working together.

"I think you will find that members of Congress - not just President Obama - want a way out of this problem and the method of cooperation will actually commend themselves to them."

Brown's speech - which comes as US stock markets collapse to their lowest level in more than a decade - follows a one-hour meeting with Barack Obama yesterday and a further one hour together over lunch (thyme-roasted chicken and nine-herb ravioli, according to the New York Times, served in the old Family Dining Room).

In between these two private sessions, the two leaders took questions from reporters in the Oval Office in a cordial question and answer session which, as the Mole reported yesterday, was introduced at the last moment by the White House in place of the more traditional podium-style press conference.

Prompted by a question from the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to the "special relationship" between the US and Britain. It was a bond that "will not break", he said.

Obama's Kenyan background - and especially the fact that his grandfather was detained by the British during the 1950s Mau-Mau uprising - had caused diplomatic speculation that the new administration might be less cosy with the British. But Obama pointed out that his mother's family came from Britain originally, and added: "This notion that somehow there is any lessening of that special relationship is misguided."

This was music to Brown's ears, most observers felt. However, Obama was careful not to use the expression "global new deal" - as Brown has dubbed the package of measures he believes are necessary to help the world out of recession and which he is trying to sell Obama before next month's G20 summit in London.

Brown's favoured measures would include the closing of tax havens and the reform of financial institutions such as the IMF - controversial because it would involve America ceding power to developing economies.

According to Nick Robinson, such reforms would allow other countries to raise questions about the behaviour of Wall Street and "it's not yet clear if the Obama administration is ready for that".

David Rothkopf, an international business consultant who worked in the Commerce Department under President Bill Clinton, told the New York Times: "It will be easy to get the G-20 into a room to ratify the idea that the world is in trouble, and that they need to cooperate.

"Getting them to actually sign on to a new international architecture and to get out their checkbook to give billions more to the World Bank and the IMF and to set up common regulatory systems will be very difficult. Yet if they stick to platitudes, the markets will give them a failing grade."

FIRST POSTED MARCH 4, 2009