Ten years ago, tens of thousands of union members, environmentalists, and other progressive critics of corporate globalization, besieged the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization. The effects of this event have been “transformational,” says Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
“The protests repudiated global conventional wisdom,” she says, “that Americans loved the American corporate model, which the U.S. was trying to foist on the world.” The success in unraveling the sense of inevitability of neo-liberalism also inspired a global justice movement that persevered despite political complications posed by Bush’s election, the 9/11 attacks, and distracting wars.
In a few days, the WTO will open its Geneva ministerial meeting—the first in four years, despite requirements to meet every two years — on the anniversary of the protests, but times have changed. Trade ministers thought that Seattle would give impetus to a Millennium Round of talks to expand the WTO, but instead that round collapsed.
Its successor – the Doha Round – is so stalled that it isn’t even on the Geneva agenda, which will focus on “housekeeping.” The agenda of expanded corporate rights and deregulation stalled not only because of protests and the unfamiliar assertiveness of developing countries, but also because it is ever more starkly out of touch with reality.
For example, despite new claims by the free-trade think tank the Peterson Institute that the Doha round — hyped as the “development round” — would deliver $300 to 700 billion in welfare gains evenly distributed between developed and developing countries, the World Bank in 2005 predicted gains of less than $100 billion. (With only $16 billion going to developing countries, a conclusion reinforced by a new study from the South Centre, a
Geneva-based NGO, which found that tariff losses for developing countries would exceed their trade gains).
Also, at a time when rich and poor countries alike are trying to better regulate the finance industry, Wallach says, the existing WTO rules forbid a wide range of regulations and bank bailouts (prompting some newly industrializing countries to point out how the U.S. is violating the WTO rules and banks in Argentina to use trade agreement provisions to challenge government policies).
Doha Round proposals would de-regulate even more, Wallach says. For example, a proposal that global accounting giant Arthur Andersen helped to write would limit any regulations “affecting trade in accountancy services.” And a measure pushed originally by Bush with support from the European Union and Canada would, according to Wallach, ban “maintenance or adoption of any policy based on firms’ size, the types of products a firm may offer, or the specific types of legal entity through which firms may supply a service.”
So far Obama, who promised he would re-think America’s approach to global economic agreements, has done very little on trade and globalization — for good or bad. Wallach notes that there is no high-ranking trade reformer in the Obama administration and that career trade staff, who exercise inordinate influence in the absence of close attention or pressure for change from Obama, are inclined to support leftover Bush/Clinton policies.
“Obama hasn’t really paid attention to it, but unfortunately those who do pay attention just continue cruising on policies in place,” Wallach says. “The administration needs to focus on changing course.” While there’s no new ‘round of WTO expansion underway, she says, “there’s no turnaround.”
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David Moberg, a former senior editor of In These Times, was on staff with the magazine from when it began publishing in 1976 until his passing in July 2022. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy.
