Rabih Moghrabi/AFP

Robert Zoellick (left) arrives at the WTO meetings in Qatar.

hen trade officials wrapped up their talks at the World Trade Organization meeting in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar in mid-November, their concluding document was so obtuse that even the Financial Times called it “almost meaningless.” But officials still heralded the beginning of a new “round” of negotiations to further deregulate the global economy, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick crowed that they had “overcome the stain of Seattle.”

The tortured prose from Doha merely papered over the contradictions in the global trading system that protests inside and outside the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle had accentuated. It could prove a hollow victory, since the concessions Zoellick made will further stiffen the already strong opposition to passage of “fast track” trade promotion authority in Congress. And negotiators over the next five years or more of talks will face continued discontent with the inadequacies and inequities of global economic deregulation from a growing opposition.

The Doha meeting set guidelines for future talks but drew up no new rules. Yet many developing countries resisted the urgings of the European Union, backed less enthusiastically by the United States, for a broad new round of negotiations. To win their support, the industrial countries promised more attention to development. But despite some rhetorical flourishes, the WTO statement simply celebrated free trade, while the richer countries resisted proposals that would have opened up their markets to more products from very poor countries. “This is a massive defeat for poor people around the world,” says Barry Coates, director of the World Development Movement. “The much-hyped development round is empty of development.”

Developing countries scored at least one victory when the WTO clearly stated that licenses could be granted to generic manufacturers to produce drugs needed to combat public health crises (although it put off any solution for countries that could not produce their own generics). In theory, the existing agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) gives countries that right, but the United States had threatened South Africa and Brazil with legal challenges to their production of generic drugs to fight AIDS (even though some U.S. officials in October proposed licensing generic production of Bayer’s Cipro in case of an anthrax epidemic).

“Zoellick said that it doesn’t mean anything, but if that’s true, then why in hell were the U.S., German, Swiss and U.K. governments fighting with such viciousness and threats and bribery to stop the statement?” asks Mark Ritchie, president of the Institute for Trade and Agricultural Policy. “They tried to stop it because it is so powerful as a political statement. It represented a coordinated non-governmental organization and developing country front that they just couldn’t abide.”

hile developing nations, NGOs and unions could agree that public health should override intellectual property rights, they were seriously divided on other points. For example, developing nations and many NGOs opposed the effort of labor to urge the WTO to cooperate more closely with the International Labor Organization (ILO) to promote core labor rights. “We were struggling just not to move backward,” says AFL-CIO trade policy specialist Thea Lee. With only modest support from the European Union (and none from the United States) on labor rights, even labor’s scaled-back agenda was “unattainable,” she says.

In addition, despite a congressional resolution to preserve U.S. laws against the “dumping” of exports into the domestic market, Zoellick agreed to negotiations on anti-dumping legislation. However, he rejected developing countries’ request for accelerated opening of U.S. textile markets. The choice may have been influenced by domestic politics: The textile industry is concentrated in Republican states, while the steel industry, one of the principal industries endangered by weakening of anti-dumping laws, is located mainly in Democratic states. In any case, the existing textile quota system will be phased out in a few years, and at that time many smaller poor countries may find their garment and textile industries devastated by competition from China, which was admitted to the WTO at this meeting (as was Taiwan).

Most developing countries also oppose proposals to build more environmental protections into the WTO rules. But despite a declaration that each country should be able to protect life, health and the environment “at the levels it considers appropriate” (as long as they’re not a “disguised restriction on international trade”), Ritchie is concerned that proposals to encourage trade in environmental products and services could be a back-door effort to privatize public water systems. And while the WTO will discuss how its rules mesh with international environmental agreements, there’s a risk that the new guidelines may create trade incentives for countries to avoid signing environmental treaties.

On the other hand, the new guidelines conclude that “non-trade concerns,” which could include environmental protection and social stability of rural areas, will be part of future agriculture negotiations. Agriculture, like trade in services and protection of intellectual property rights, was a topic of negotiations that would have continued even without a new round of talks. But the guidelines suggest that it will remain extremely difficult to eliminate the dumping of agricultural products in foreign markets, which often undermines peasant farmers and domestic food security while enriching multinational grain-trading companies. European export subsidies were the main target at the meetings, but U.S. payments to farmers also subsidize exports at less than the cost of production, even though neither increased exports nor government payments have provided adequate income for small farmers.

Many developing countries, unions and NGOs also want to keep discussions about issues like investment, government procurement, and competition policy (which could open new ways to undermine government “monopolies”) out of the WTO. The compromise language for the new round of negotiations gives governments two years for preparatory talks about these controversial issues before they must agree unanimously to proceed with full negotiations. But even if nations like India block such negotiations two years from now, the rich countries are already pressing many of their demands through bilateral trade deals or regional agreements, like NAFTA—which represents the high-water mark in corporate power to challenge government regulations on foreign investment—or the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

conomic and social development could go hand in hand with expanding world trade, but deregulated trade on its own is unlikely to bring development—especially if the trade agreements continue to enshrine multinational corporate power and intellectual property protections, undermine public services, encourage exploitation of the environment, and discourage workers rights. But the WTO, by design, focuses on the multinational corporate interests in trade and investment, not on economic or social development. Still, even with an ambiguous and scaled-down agenda, it will be difficult for the rich countries to negotiate the deal they want without significant concessions to developing countries (most likely backed up with intimidation and threats to withhold foreign aid from those who won’t cooperate).

The international labor movement, which has fought for measures like debt cancellation to encourage development will need to work with developing countries and NGOs to block expansion of the WTO agenda. That may involve more attempts by unions in developing countries to make the case to their own governments for stronger protection of labor rights in international agreements. “Long term, I think the labor movement has some rethinking and restrategizing to do on international work,” says the AFL-CIO’s Lee. “We don’t have enough developing-country governments to stand up and publicly support even a dialogue between the ILO and the WTO.”

Although some NGO strategists, like Ritchie, see great promise in future coalitions with developing-country governments, there are still glaring gaps—even open conflicts—between what unions, environmentalists and some other NGOs want and what is advocated by those governments, which often represent local ruling classes that are hardly reliable progressive allies. On the other hand, certain rich countries—especially in the European Union—support labor rights and environmental protections, even if they also back rules on investment or other policies that might prove very harmful to workers and the environment.

It won’t be easy to put together a global coalition that can embrace the interests of workers and small farmers, as well as defenders of the environment, in both rich and poor countries. But without such an alliance, the proponents of corporate power and a deregulated global economy will win again in the next round of talks at the WTO.

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