Days after the Tsunami struck, the EU imposed crippling tariffs of $4,540 a ton on Thai exports of cumarin, a plant extract widely used in perfume. Fraser Nelson reports in The Business that the move is designed to protect the French company Rhodia, Europe’s only producer of cumarin. The EU claims that Thailand was re-selling backdoor Chinese cumarin, already subject to a heavy tariff. Nelson says that:

An "investigation" into the alleged China-Thailand trade did not involve a visit to Thailand. The EU noted that no one in Thailand had contacted it to object - on the presumption that they heard about an investigation. Thailand's guilt, its report said, "must be inferred, in the absence of contrary evidence".

Charities have denounced the action. Michael Bayley, an Oxfam spokesman, described the action as "criminal." Others point to the EU's hypocrisy in offering aid with one hand, while denying them access to its markets with the other. It is a formula which fosters dependence rather than development, and typifies the way in which the EU protects its inefficient producers at the expense of people in developing countries trying to lift themselves out of poverty. Coming immediately after the battering Thailand took from the Tsunami tragedy, this action exposes the EU's blinkered and selfish attitude to trade. The case for opening the markets of rich countries to the goods of poorer ones is now overwhelming, and must be one of the imperatives for 2005.