Newsletter No 21

Date: 30 March 2026

War, corporate power and food prices

Despite the deepening gloom around the world, both the new takes on Critical Takes this month – on public development banks and UN talks on a tax convention - are mildly encouraging. It makes for a nice change.

First, the bad news: as we all know, the very violent US-Israeli war with Iran has triggered an immense shock to the supply of energy and some other key commodities from the Gulf. The cost of living will go up everywhere with the poorest people suffering the most.

This article in the UK's New Statesman magazine by the economists Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk warns of the prospect of “sellers’ inflation”, meaning that giant corporations exploit their dominance of global supply chains in a time of crisis to raise their prices, so as to protect and even increase their profit margins.

If the crisis goes on too long, they say, then the result would be global recession and a big hit to corporate profits in general. In the meantime, however, sellers’ inflation would mean a further transfer of wealth to corporate shareholders from everyone else.

The authors propose that governments respond to this risk by capping prices for essential goods and capping profit margins along supply chains. Some of this has already started to happen around the world.

Rich countries have the means to do all these things, if their governments want to. But what about poorer countries where there is less purchasing and regulatory power?

There needs to be some kind of global co-ordination mechanism which ensures that all countries can get access to enough food at prices their citizens can afford. This is not my specialist area but I’m sure that proposals must already exist for such a mechanism.

Here is the Shamba Centre on Food and Climate’s latest take on the Iran war and price-gouging. And here is the Critical Takes interview with Chilufya Sampa, a former chief regulator in Zambia, about monopolies and price-gouging in African countries.

 

Public banks as an alternative to private capital

Public banking expert Thomas Marois explained in an interview for Critical Takes why public development banks can offer a multi-trillion-dollar alternative to private investment which could be much more democratic, provided these banks are genuinely accountable to the societies they’re meant to serve.

He cites various examples of such banks around the world. I actually finished the interview feeling relatively cheerful, which is unusual nowadays. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t realise that the development banks of some countries – notably China and Germany – are much bigger than the World Bank in terms of assets.

Speaking of the World Bank, it’s just admitted that industrial policy is a good thing, after three decades of insisting on the opposite. The reasons are obvious: China has shown that industrial policy works and Western countries are scrambling to keep up. This volte-face raises the question: what is the World Bank actually for in today’s world?

 

More optimism: the UN tax negotiations

Also this month, UN independent expert Attiya Waris explained on Critical Takes why negotiations at the UN for a global tax convention have progressed faster than might have been expected, given the deep resistance to change among many wealthier countries.

She says that governments [most significantly in the global South] are motivated by the prospect that a UN tax convention could bring them more revenues by rebalancing taxing rights between countries and stemming the flow of corporate profits into tax havens.

And at a time when powerful states are using fiscal policy as a tool of coercion – as Trump has been doing with his tariff-based bullying – states have an incentive to support multilateral rules that protect their own interests. A tax convention would be one such rule.

This latter point got me thinking about the relatively fast movement of negotiations on a tax convention compared to the much slower progress of negotiations for a Binding Treaty on business and human rights, which has been under discussion since 2014.

I suppose a reason for the difference in pace could be that the Binding Treaty would create a new set of obligations which governments would then have to expend resources to uphold, rather than offering to provide them with more revenues as the tax convention does.

But it seems to me that in an era when very large corporations are openly throwing their weight around in other countries, as Big Tech is doing with Trump’s backing, it’s a matter of pragmatism as well as principle for less powerful states to back a human rights treaty which offers some protection at the level of norms for their citizens and societies.

Here’s a new report on the Binding Treaty from the South Centre.

Coming up soon on Critical Takes: more fresh thinking about the alternatives to corporate power, this time in the farming and pharmaceutical industries.

Until next month, good luck with your work!

Diarmid