alternative reader no. 138
WTO Trade
Talks Collapse, What It Means for Workers
BY SHAWN GARCIA
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Posted by Bulatlat
The World Trade Organization Doha Development Agenda was
suspended on July 24, 2006. The decision to halt the "Doha Round" of trade
talks came after the major imperialist powers—the United States and
countries in the European Union—failed to reach a compromise on world
agricultural trade. For the workers and oppressed people of the world, the
collapse of the WTO talks is a welcome development. It brings some
breathing room, however brief and limited, to our common struggle against
the imperialist institution and economic domination.
The breakdown in this round of WTO talks was due
principally to inter-imperialist squabbling. The United States has refused
to lower its farm subsidies, which the E.U. is demanding, until countries
like India and Brazil agree to open their markets to more U.S. farm goods.
In response, the E.U. accused the U.S. government of erecting barriers to
agricultural goods trade. Both sides refused to budge; so, the trade talks
collapsed for the time being.
The real purpose of the WTO
The WTO was supposedly founded to "promote free trade"
in order to "stimulate economic growth." But since its inception in 1995,
the World Trade Organization has gained notoriety for its instrumental
role in destroying the livelihoods of workers and peasants throughout the
world. The WTO is one of many institutions, like the G8, the International
Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, that undermine the sovereignty of
nations by forcing the implementation of disastrous neoliberal economic
policies of privatization, liberalization and deregulation.
The World Trade Organization is one of the most powerful
legislative and judicial bodies in the world. It oversees global trade in
goods and services. Unlike the other institutions mentioned, the WTO has a
thin veneer of "one country one vote" democracy. In reality, the WTO is
dominated by the United States and used by all imperialist countries to
bully less developed nations into opening their markets and undercutting
the living conditions of the majority of their citizens.
Many people all over the globe understood from the WTO’s
founding that it wasn’t created to stimulate economic prosperity for the
working class. Over the years, this has been confirmed time and time
again. The WTO has operated to concentrate capital and natural resources
further into the hands of a small super-rich minority at the expense of
workers everywhere.
Just like the World Bank, the IMF, and all neoliberal
institutions, the WTO is designed to enrich the wealthiest capitalists in
the most developed nations. In November 2005, the World Bank estimated in
a report that $287 billion could be gained from global trade
liberalization. But the vast majority of the money gained would flow
directly to the top. According to Tim Wise, deputy director of the Global
Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, "70 percent of
the gains will go to developed countries." (Reuters, Nov. 25, 2005)
Resisting the WTO
The anti-globalization movement, begun in the 1990s by
progressive and socialist forces, mobilized hundreds of thousands all over
the world to denounce and stop the WTO’s policies of exploitation. The
unbridled arrogance of the global capitalists has been met by militant
protest both in their home countries and wherever their ministers and
government representatives meet.
The Doha Round of the WTO started in November 2001. The
previous round of trade talks—the so-called Uruguay
Anti-WTO protests rocked Seattle in December 1999. |
Round—started in 1986, but was only completed in late
1993. A new round of talks was to start at the WTO meeting in Seattle in
late 1999 but failed to launch after mass protests shut down the city and
some underdeveloped countries raised objections at the meetings.
During the previous round of talks, the imperialist
countries eventually succeeded in extending their economic agenda from
goods to "intellectual property" and services.
Under the Doha Round, the imperialists want to force
oppressed countries to reverse any import taxes they’ve erected as a way
to keep domestic markets stable and away from imperialist domination. They
also want further "liberalization" of the trade in services. The
imperialists also want to scale back any economic concessions they’ve
granted to oppressed countries under previous trade deals.
For the oppressed nations participating in the talks,
they mainly want the U.S. government and the E.U. to push back their
massive agricultural subsidies that make it easy for cheap goods from
imperialist countries to flood the markets of less developed national
economies.
Opportunity and challenge
According to Prof. Jose Maria Sison, chairperson of the
International League of Peoples’ Struggle, the collapse of the Doha talks
presents both an opportunity and a challenge to workers. In a July 26
statement, Sison said:
"It is an opportunity to carry forward the struggle to
undermine the WTO as a sweeping mechanism for imperialist ‘globalization’
and the ever greater exploitation of the world’s people and natural
resources. The underdeveloped world has already suffered much from the
past decade of the WTO with worsening poverty and unemployment as well as
the degradation of its already backward agricultural and industrial
sectors.
"Yet, there is also a challenge as the big powers will
now more likely use its other means for advancing their plundering
agenda," warned Sison. These other means could be increased pressure
through exploitative bilateral trade agreements or tactics like imposing
economic sanctions, funding phony "opposition" groups, and carrying out
all types of military intervention. The imperialist countries of the
world, especially the United States, will not hesitate to make oppressed
countries suffer who seek to remain independent of their dictates. Take
the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.
As long as the capitalist class and its government
managers decide what will be done with the world’s resources and who will
dictate global trade relations, working and oppressed people’s needs will
never be met. The only way to bring an end to further exploitation is by
organizing a resistance movement with both national and international
dimensions that is defined and guided by the desires and needs of the
masses of working people.
Posted by
Bulatlat
BACK TO
TOP ■
COMMENT
© 2006 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Media Center
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided
its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.