Today, the U.S. made headlines by putting a new package of aid money for poor countries on the table:

HONG KONG – In his opening speech to the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman announced today the United States plans to more than double its contributions to global Aid for Trade, from $1.3 billion in 2005 to $2.7 billion in grants annually by 2010.

Let me translate “Aid for Trade” for you. It means that instead of offering a fair trade — reductions in agricultural subsidies in exchange for the poor countries opening their industrial and services markets — the U.S. (and EU) will use a big package of aid money to bribe the poor countries into looking the other way on farm subsidies and opening their markets anyway. So far, the reactions of the bigger developing nations like Brazil have indicated that it’s not working. They still want to see major concessions on agriculture before they move on industrial goods and services.

The big loser in all this is the U.S. taxpayer. They end up paying for the billion-dollar farm subsidies and the billion-dollar aid package. Deficit? What deficit?