BY SHAWN GARCIA
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Bulatlat.com
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.
