MB Civic

Whither the WTO

William Greider

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=105865

The announcement from Geneva that the “Doha Round”
negotiations for another global trade agreement is in
“collapse” lacked high drama since impending failure
was already clear to all but the most fervent
cheerleaders for the World Trade Organization. Five
years of sloganeering and media pep talks and clever
maneuvering failed to persuade developing nations or
even inspire much enthusiasm in advanced economies.
This is very good news for peoples of the world, though
you won’t see the story played that way in the American
press.

In round-about fashion, the WTO’s failure represents
belated vindication for the blue-green movement that
arose in Seattle six years ago and the Global Social
Forum launched later from Porto Alegre, Brazil. These
bottom-up political mobilizations offered an
alternative vision for globalization – not dominated by
the desires and dictates of multinational corporations
but by ideas of popular sovereignty and common human
aspirations that are shared by people in vastly
different trading nations. That promising movement was
eclipsed by the drama of 9/11 and war in Iraq, but it
was never really sidetracked. Many individual countries
have already revolted against the “Washington
Consensus” and even establishment experts are beginning
to acknowledge its failures. Defeat for them in Geneva
is an important marker of progress for those who can
imagine a different world.

That assembly includes especially the poorer nations of
the world, struggling to find their way in a complex
game of economic diplomacy usually controlled by the
corporate big boys. This time, the impoverished
countries stood their ground. They did not take the
bait and swallow the empty promises, though they were
coaxed and bullied by the major industrial players, led
by the US. That reflects both their courage and growing
maturity.

The essential deal offered the poor was, if they would
accept the expanded domination of the WTO and its
multinational sponsors, the rich nations would slash
their lush subsidies for global agribusiness, leaving
more market space for agricultural producers in
developing nations. Many gullible editorial writers
bought the logic, but not the poorer nations
themselves. To believe that promise, you had to believe
George W. Bush was going to sell out Texas cotton and
Florida sugar and Midwestern grain or that Paris
intended to dump the prosperous farmers of Normandy.

The larger meaning of the Doha collapse is the growing
rejection of the WTO itself as a trustworthy governing
institution for the global system. It was created ten
years ago and it’s been down hill ever since, both for
rich and poor nations. The activists of Global Trade
Watch, arm in arm with other groups around the world,
make this case persuasively in a new briefing paper.
The demise of Doha, they argue, should restart the
worldwide debate on new and more fundamental terms –
more promising for people and less deferential to
global capital.

“Instead of pinning blame on specific countries, the
focus of energy should be on how the world’s
governments can develop a multilateral trade system
that preserves the benefits of trade growth and
development, while pruning away the many
anti-democratic condstraints on domestic policy making
in the existing WTO rules,” Global Trade Watch
explains. “Much of the backlash against coroporate
globalization implemented by the WTO is aimed at the
damage caused by the comprehensive one-size-fits-all,
non-trade rules comprising the majority of the WTO
text.”

In blunt summary, the new approach means the following:
Scale back the powers of the WTO so that human rights,
environmental, labor and other public-interest
standards can be adopted “as a floor of conduct for
corporations seeking the benefits of global trade
rules.” In other words, bring other international
organizations into the process, with power to enforce
standards on everything from toxics to food security to
worker rights.

The system, meanwhile, must loosen its grip on
individual nations and governments so they can develop
their own domestic priorities on non-trade issues.
“Countries must be free to prioritize other values and
goals above what are sometimes countervailing demands
of multinational corporations,” the briefing paper
asserts.

This is an immense challenge and obviously difficult
for brain-dead politicians to grasp and embrace. But
it’s also an exciting and promising new opening.
Imagine that the collapse of the old order has
occurred, though not yet acknowledged by its sponsors.
“Another world is possible,” as the activists like to
say, and it has just become a bit more possible.

***

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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern,  former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration