WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
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Creeping Authoritarianism.
Back Talk
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Appall-o-Meter
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Arrested Development
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Truth Before Freedom
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In Person
Diane Wilson: An unreasonable woman.
Art and lies.
Words for an Afterlife
Tahar Djaout's Last Summer of Reason.
Art and Shadow
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Salman Rushdie does New York.
Lost in Transit
V.S. Naipaul's comic journey.
The Corrections of Jonathan Franzen.
The Lonely Tribune
Victor Serge's revolution.
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November 21, 2001
WTO Woes
Free-traders agree to a new ‘round’ of talks in
Qatar but not much else.
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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WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
