The World Trade Organization began its Sixth Ministerial Meeting on Tuesday this week. Sarah Laeng-Gilliatt from the Institute for Nonviolent Economics will comment on this historic WTO Meeting.
A united voice of highly diverse players against a new round of negotiations is resounding in the streets of Hong Kong this week. That’s because trade delegates from 149 countries are gathered there. Over this week, the WTO hopes to liberalize, that is open up, markets in agricultural products, services and industrial goods.
The World Trade Organization’s legitimacy has been eroding for several years. Since its inception in 1995, two ministerial meetings have failed–first in Seattle in 1999 and second in Cancun in 2003. Conclusive data show that a decade of WTO implementation has left the majority of the world’s population in worse conditions in rich and poor countries alike. The developing world is more united and better organized than ever before, and this week it will be difficult to bully the third world into signing agreements against their interests. All these indicators of the contradictions within the trading system have led once again to difficulties leading up to this week’s meeting, forcing the WTO to lower its sights for Hong Kong.
This round of negotiations has begun with the needs of developing countries almost entirely sidelined, and the negotiating stances of the developed countries have rendered the development language double speak. When we hear of “aid for trade” this week, let’s realize that that aid will be helping the developing world implement agreements that they have been forced to sign onto in the first place. And despite the spin that will emerge in this week’s media regarding the benefits of trade for developing countries, trade liberalization is not development. In fact, a recent World Bank study shows that developing countries rarely realize any substantial benefits from tariff reductions.
What happens this week in Hong Kong will invariably be momentous, for so much is at stake. Two different outcomes seem plausible. The first, and the one dreaded by millions around the world, is that the rich countries will be successful in clearing the way to further open the markets of the developing countries. The effects of such increased liberalization could be economically and socially devastating, with millions of small farmers pulled off the land, and thousands of industries losing business or closing altogether. That this would happen under the banner of “development” makes this option all the more painful.
The other possible outcome brings much hope, and would, in fact, be in all of our interests. It would be that little agreement is reached this week. Indeed, stagnation of the talks seems imminent. The US and EU are hoping to patch an agreement together by trading favors amongst delegates, but they are hemmed in between inherently oppositional forces–corporate interests, electoral pressures, and now imperatives to make real on their development promises pledged at the ‘01 Doha WTO meeting.
If lack of agreement does end up being the outcome, it will certainly be downplayed, so don’t be dismayed if you don’t hear a lot about it. The developed countries would surely continue all sorts of tactics to try to open markets by the end of 2006, but might be unable to do so. In this case, the talks would likely go into hibernation since it would be difficult to conclude the negotiation without President Bush’s trade promotion authority, which he probably will be unable to renew after the mid-2007 cut off since it was only granted him this time by a close vote in a moment of post-9/11 confusion.
This hibernation would signal the failure of this round, and would be a major blow to the empire. Such a scenario could open up considerable space for the inspiring visions from the grassroots, for a trading system that serves people and the environment. Indeed, it is time for decentralizing economic and political power and strengthening a pluralistic system of international organizations, agreements and regional groupings. Within more flexible and responsive structures, all countries would emerge from the strait jacket of the one-size fits all economic system that is leading to current tensions, and countries would be able to act on their own genuine development priorities.
This is Sarah Laeng-Gilliatt from the Institute for Nonviolent Economics.
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