Global: Rich countries breaching WTO rules on export subsidies

Under one of the 60 or so agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), WTO member countries are prohibited from providing government or state subsidies to exporters. When most of the WTO agreements were finalised back in 1994, however, the world's richest countries obtained an exception for their export credit agencies (ECAs) -- the organisations that use taxpayers' money to provide various financial services to private corporations from their home country to assist them in doing business abroad.