An activists' guide to the World Trade Organization
By Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke
In early December, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the most powerful international institution in the world, will meet in Seattle to launch a new round of negotiations among its 134 member countries. Since the deliberations will affect every Canadian in areas as diverse as food safety, health care, education and culture, it is imperative that we become informed about how the WTO operates.
The World Trade Organization was established in 1995 at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO enforces several sets of trade rules: the GATT, whose mandate is to eliminate all remaining tariff and non-tariff barriers to the movement of capital and goods between countries; the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), mandated to do the same in the area of services; Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMS), which dictates what governments can and cannot do in regulating foreign investment; Trade Related Intellectual Property Measures (TRIPS), which sets enforceable global rules on patents, copyrights and trademarks; the Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Standards Agreement (SPS), which sets constraints on government policies relating to food safety as well as plant and animal health; the Financial Services Agreement (FSA), established to remove obstacles to the free movement of financial services corporations, including banks and insurance companies; the Agreement on Agriculture, which sets rules on the international food trade and restricts domestic agriculture policy; and other agreements dealing with information technology and telecommunications.
What sets the WTO apart from other global institutions, however, is its legislative and judicial power to challenge the laws, policies and programs of countries that do not conform to WTO rules, and to strike down those countries' laws if they are seen to be too "trade restrictive." WTO cases are decided - in secret - by a panel of three trade bureaucrats. Once a ruling is made, worldwide conformity is required. Countries are obligated to harmonize their laws or face the prospect of perpetual trade sanctions or fines.
The WTO upholds no minimum standards to protect the environment, labour rights, social programs or cultural diversity. And it has already been used to strike down a number of key nation-state environmental, food safety, and human rights laws. In fact, in less than five years it has become the most powerful tool of transnational corporations, working with trade bureaucrats in Geneva, Washington and Tokyo (as well as Ottawa), to establish what is essentially a system of corporate world government.
A WTO Hit List
When the WTO convenes in Seattle, it intends to accelerate its agenda of liberalization and privatization. Canadians stand to lose in the following 10 areas.
Food Security
Many countries, including the European Union, Japan and Third World countries, insist that government support and regulation of agriculture is essential for maintaining food security. World leaders in agricultural export - including Canada and the U.S. - want to complete the task of opening up world markets for agricultural trade through the WTO. If this latter group has its way, the Canadian Wheat Board and government regulatory mechanisms such as Canada's unique marketing board system (which provides security for both farmers and consumers) will likely become targets.
Food Safety
In recent months, the United States has spearheaded a series of moves to put genetically engineered food products on the WTO agenda. Both the U.S. and Canada want to ensure guaranteed market access for the bio-tech food industry, not only in Europe where resistance is greatest, but also in Japan and the Third World. The U.S. may promote negotiations for a "stand-alone" agreement on bio-tech issues, such as voluntary labelling, in exchange for guaranteed market access, thereby further jeopardizing people's rights to food safety.
Health Care
The U.S. and Europe are committed to including health care in the GATS talks leading up to the WTO meeting. To date, the GATS has been a "bottom-up" agreement, meaning that only those services that countries voluntarily put forward have been subject to negotiation. The new proposal is to make the GATS a "top-down" agreement whereby all services, including health care, would automatically be included. The U.S. Coalition of Service Industries has successfully lobbied the U.S. government to force other countries, through the WTO, to open up their health care facilities to foreign ownership.
Public Education
Public education is also slated for negotiations at the WTO meeting. Under the GATS agreement, countries must grant "national treatment" rights to foreign corporations, including the right to "set up a commercial presence in the export market." If the U.S. and Europe are successful in including educational services in the so-called Millennium Round talks, Canada's public education system will have to open itself up to foreign competition and the private sector. Former Trade Minister Sergio Marchi has already called for international rules to oversee the global trade in the "education industry."
Cultural Integrity
The WTO has already been used to strike down Canada's ability to protect its magazines. The massive U.S. entertainment industry, which sees culture strictly as a business, has convinced the U.S. Administration to fiercely resist cultural protectionism in any form and to advance its global interests at the WTO talks in Seattle. There, new negotiations are scheduled to further liberalize telecommunications, including the Internet and digital technologies, as well as patents, trademarks and copyright law. Global negotiations on the deregulation of broadcasting are due to begin at the same time, so Canada's public broadcasting system is likely to be a target.
Water
Included in the GATS talks is a heading called "environmental services," which includes the delivery of water and wastewater services, still largely held in the public realm in Canada. The U.S. and Europe also want water services included under new WTO talks on competition, meant to open up closed markets to their big water corporations. This would not only force Canadian municipalities to relinquish control of this service, but could give transnational corporations the right to export Canadian bulk water for profit. Water is already included in the WTO as a "good," and Article XI of the WTO prohibits export controls of any good, even for environmental purposes.
Labour Standards
Although workers' rights are not formally on the WTO agenda for Seattle, there has been an ongoing debate in the WTO about the need to incorporate core labour standards as a means for overcoming the exploitation of cheap labour, including child labour. Even so, there are agenda items that will have a direct effect on labour rights, including the reduction or elimination of industrial tariffs on products (many of which are manufactured in low-wage countries) and the proposed services accord, which could have negative impacts on public service workers. As well, Japan's recent efforts (on behalf of its own giant automakers) to win a WTO ruling against the North American auto pact could have serious repercussions.
Human Rights
Transnational corporations are using the WTO to attack government spending policies that contain environmental, social or human rights conditions. Basically, the rules forbid all non-economic considerations on government "procurement," or contracts. For instance, the state of Massachusetts was forced under a WTO ruling to abandon its law preventing government contracts from being given to any company doing business with Burma on account of that country's egregious human rights abuses. There is mounting pressure to make these rules even stronger at the upcoming talks in Seattle.
Forestry Conservation
The ability of governments to ensure forest conservation could be severely curtailed by the forthcoming WTO negotiations. The U.S., pressured by its big timber corporations, wants a woods products agreement that would compel countries to get rid of tariff and even non-tariff barriers restricting the import and export of forest products. Not only will this allow global timber companies to exploit the remainder of the world's forest reserves, but it could also mean major job losses for forestry workers in North America as production moves offshore. A similar WTO accord is proposed for fisheries.
Local Development
The WTO proposals to establish a code for government procurement will have a major impact on the ability of local governments to ensure that development projects serve community needs and priorities. If such a code is enacted through the WTO, then not only national but also local and regional governments will be prohibited from using their purchasing powers and public subsidies to stimulate domestic industries and companies, unless they also provide the same advantages to foreign-based corporations. In effect, governments will be stripped of the power to ensure that economic development serves community priorities.
Return of the MAI
One way or another, negotiating a global investment treaty will be on the WTO table in Seattle. Even though the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was shut down at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union, Japan and Canada have all called for global investment talks in the new WTO round. For its part, the U.S. remains lukewarm, preferring instead that investment negotiations resume at the OECD and proposing that changes be made in the TRIMS. But the fact remains that MAI-like rules and disciplines are already being incorporated in the WTO through the back door. The proposed codes for government procurement and competition policy, for example, contain many of the disciplines outlined in the MAI. Similarly, if a subsidies code based on the principle of national treatment is adopted along with the proposed accords for services and agriculture, then many more MAI-like disciplines will creep into the WTO. Anti-MAI activists need to be aware of the WTO's growing number of backdoor manoeuvres.
