A few weeks back, a short article that Joseph Baines and I wrote on commodity trading firms was published in Open Democracy. This piece offers a summary of some of the main claims we make in a journal article published in the Review of International Political Economy earlier this year.

Our main argument is that financial activists face serious hurdles in trying to influence the commodity traders to address the socially and ecologically harmful effects of their activities. This is because these powerful but shadowy firms are organized in ways that shield them from outside pressure.