World Trade Organization Issues
prepared by Steve Staples
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BACKGROUND
In the short time since it was created following the Uruguay Round of GATT
negotiations in 1995, the World Trade Organization ("WTO") has quickly assumed
the position of the most important multilateral institution in the world.
The WTO's power goes far beyond promoting trade - it sets limits on how
governments may participate within or regulate national economies on
behalf of their citizens - clawing back democracy and development. It
employs a secretive dispute panel with the power to impose punitive
trade sanctions on nations who refuse to change their laws to conform
with the demands of the WTO's trade rules.
In many respects, the WTO has marginalized the United Nations and has
become the main venue for international relations and diplomacy. Nations
outside the WTO clamour to become members of the club. The rise of
transnational corporations and their enormous economic and political
power has put the so-called "corporate agenda" of liberalization,
deregulation, and privatization at the top of the world agenda.
Meanwhile the United Nations can only dream of the power and influence
of the WTO.
The WTO's agenda of promoting unfettered capitalism at the expense of a
government's ability to control the economy for the benefit of its
people contributes to poverty, human rights violations, environmental
degradation - all of the roots causes of war.
The authors of trade and investment agreements understand the social
destruction resulting from free trade, and so exempt restrictions on
governments for "national security" reasons, allowing them to spend
public monies on weapons, armies and internal police forces to protect
foreign investment from citizen movements which oppose the corporate
agenda.
The result is the creation of the "global war system." In the
industrialized economies of the north, military spending in many
countries is on the rise again - ten years after the end of the Cold
War. Billions of tax dollars are slashed from social programs to be
spent on new weapons, many of which are then sold around the world.
In the emerging economies of the south, corporations demand weak labour
and environmental standards to extract natural resources or build goods
destined for northern markets. The economic interests of transnational
corporations are protected by the technologically advanced militaries of
their allies in northern governments. And occasionally, cruise missile
diplomacy is used against a non-conforming nation.
However, citizens organizations and trade unions are resisting the
attack on the public domain and democracy.
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WTO RESOURCES
A Citizen's Guide to the World Trade Organization - Everything You Need
to Know to Fight for Fair Trade - July 20, 1999 (you will need Adobe
Acrobat Reader 4.0 to view this page)
http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/gattwto/wto-book.pdf
The World Trade Organization: A Guide for Environmentalists (March 1999)
http://www.wcel.org/wcelpub/1999/12757.html
Government of British Columbia's site on the World Trade Organization
http://www.ei.gov.bc.ca/Trade&Export/FTAA-WTO/Default.htm
International Forum on Globalization
http://www.ifg.org/events.html
End the Arms Race's Arms Trade and Globalization Campaign (Peacewire)
http://www.peacewire.org/campaigns/content.html
World Trade Organization
http://www.wto.org