Mia Mottley

But for the most part, we have been able to bring about development to our people in the post-colonial environment that sees people, that feels people, that hears people, that recognizes that, look, okay, we need to provide education, shelter, housing, et cetera.

We haven't done it for all yet.

but we're on that pathway.

Not everybody's gotten on the train yet, but a lot have.

And when you start to compare it to other countries and other regions in the world, you begin to see that.

The difficulty has come in that in many instances, small states have had rules imposed on them that don't make any sense.

I mean, for years, the last 30 years, we've been arguing to the WTO that we need special and differential treatment as small states.

And that my percentage share of global trade in goods is 0.000%.

And my percentage share of global trade in services is 0.001%.

So we have no capacity to distort global trade, but

If you treat me as if I am equal to a large nation, then you will kill me before I can even start.

You destroy anything that I can do to keep my population alive in terms of manufacturing or in terms of whatever.

So that there is the old Aristotelian principle

equality for equals and proportionality for unequals.

And if we were simply to use that and to recognize that you can't have the same one size fits all prescription, you can't do it in a family, far less a country, far less a global community.

And if we can get that, so many things that we've been trying to solve will find themselves in place.

And part of the difficulty is, is that the new world post-1945 was still remade in an imperial order.

So that all the talk about sovereignty and independent countries, you're independent so long as you do as I say.

Not even as I do, because when they told us don't do quantitative easing and don't print money, the truth is when COVID hit, what did the developed world do?

Oh, they printed money.