Bill Ayers speaks out! An In These Times exclusive.

In These Times

PrintDiscuss
Views » October 1, 2003

Free Trade at the Crossroad

By David Moberg

‘Do you want us to continue with a multilateral system that does nothing for us?’
The collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Cancun has greatly delayed the negotiations of any new expanded trade agreement. That prospect brought moans from U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who blamed the result on a clash between “can-do” and “won’t-do” countries. It also brought cheers from some anti-globalization groups. There is reason to cheer—but not much. With the delay comes hope that a better deal might emerge for developing countries. It also will be tougher for President George W. Bush to push through his Free Trade Agreement for the Americas when negotiations begin this November in Miami. But delaying the WTO negotiations is not likely to lead to a progressive trade agreement that will reduce inequality, favor farmers and workers, protect the environment, and build genuine popular democracy.

The WTO negotiations stalled, in part, because a bloc of 21 developing countries emerged as a new negotiating force willing to stand up to the United States and the European Union, which typically dominate the organization. The G21, along with other developing countries, resisted the agreement because the rich countries offered too little (particularly an inadequate reduction in their dumping of agricultural products at low prices on the world market) and demanded too much (especially a commitment to negotiate rules governing investment, government procurement, competition and trade facilitation).

This round of trade talks was supposed to bring more fairness to world trade. As even former International Monetary Fund Deputy Director Stanley Fischer admitted, “The world trading system is biased against developing countries.” While some developing countries, notably China, have grown rapidly over the past decade, conditions in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia have gotten worse.

Often the successful countries, like China, have prospered by violating the free trade doctrines of the “Washington consensus”—financial openness, privatization, government austerity and low tariffs—that some of the less successful countries have followed more rigorously. Tanzanian Minister of Industry and Trade caught the mood of the dissidents when he asked, “Do you want us to continue with a multilateral system that does nothing for us?”

At Cancun the United States ignored the demand from four small African countries to stop dumping subsidized cotton on the world market—a practice that depressed the cotton prices their poor farmers are dependent on. According to Oxfam, the United States spends twice as much on its harmful subsidies for cotton exports, mainly for a small number of wealthy Southern farmers, than on aid to sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet simply attacking subsidies for European and American farmers misses the mark. The agricultural systems of rich countries can be reformed both to support reasonable incomes for small farmers and to stop the dumping that undermines world markets. Likewise, encouraging agricultural exports from some developing countries might help them earn hard currencies. But the winners, even in a country like Brazil with its progressive leader, Lula, are likely to be big soybean farmers on former rainforest land and agribusiness corporations employing child laborers in orange groves—not the poor and landless peasants of a group like Movimiento Sin Tierra.

Critics of the WTO may be happy that the G21 blocked the rich countries, but are the leaders of these countries really a progressive force or are they simply reflecting the interests of their own elites, much as United States trade representatives represent American multinational corporate interests? Will the G21, for example, fight for labor rights in a global economy when two of its members are Colombia, where more trade unionists are killed each year than in any other nation, and China, where all worker organizing outside the state-controlled union is ruthlessly quashed?

Ultimately, a comprehensive development strategy must expand the social rights and power of the majority of people in each country. To take advantage of the opening at Cancun, it is more important than ever for the labor and environmental movements to forge political ties with progressive forces in developing countries.
David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. Recently he has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy.

More information about David Moberg

  • subscribe to print magazine

  • Reader Comments

    It is true that the winners of an agricultural export encouraging policy in Brazil would be the big soybean farmers, an the landless peasants would not be directly affected. However, Brazil’s official language is Portuguese, and Spanish is not spoken here. There’s no “Movimiento Sin Tierra”, but a “Movimento dos Sem-Terra”, instead.

    Posted by Lucas Neves on Oct 1, 2003 at 6:31 PM

    Please tell me as you can. Because i want to know all the issues.

    Posted by ung Praseth on Oct 2, 2003 at 5:17 AM

    The interests of the transnational corporations are ultimately in basic conflict with concepts of national sovereignty.  In a white paper commissioned by President George Washington and the U.S. Congress, first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton articulated a policy of industrial and military self-sufficiency.  Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures says:
    “Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of Subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence.

    The possession of these is necessary to the perfection of the body politic; to the safety as well as to the welfare of the society; the want of either is the want of an important Organ of political life and Motion; and in the various crises which await a state, it must severely feel the effects of any such deficiency. The extreme embarrassments of the United States during the late War, from an incapacity of supplying themselves, are still matter of keen recollection: A future war might be expected again to exemplify the mischiefs and dangers of a situation to which that incapacity is still in too great a degree applicable, unless changed by timely and vigorous exertion. To effect this change, as fast as shall be prudent, merits all the attention and all the Zeal of our Public Councils; ‘tis the next great work to be accomplished.”

    Our present trade agreements are in contradiction to the designs and intent of our founding fathers.  Their ‘next great work to be accomplished’ is being systematically undone.  Not every nation is so willing as we to complacently relinquish its vitality for quick, dirty profits.  Our hubris and naivete will eventually exact a substantial cost.

    B G Cosby

    Posted by B G Cosby on Oct 3, 2003 at 8:31 AM

    B G Cosby,...thank you for sharing that beautiful vision articulated by some of our “forefathers”.  Although they
    served in positions of “power”, they held the humility necessary to offer such incredible wisdom.  Unlike the “leadership” of today, they embraced the notion that a nation must be built from the foundation up,...not from the “white ivory tower” down.  The “white ivory” ones may be back and doing havoc once again.  Butl,...at least one can sense that those “towers” are having shorter and shorter life spans.  It’s all a process. 

    Posted by Just Me on Oct 16, 2003 at 5:51 PM

  • register a new account »Posting Security

    To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.
     

    Retreive lost password »

Appeared in the October 27, 2003 Issue
Also by David Moberg
  • Obama and the Union Vote
    Polls suggest mandate for reform surpasses support for ObamaPosted on November 10, 2008
  • The View From Ohio
    Will voters in the economically ravaged Buckeye State 'get over' race and support Obama?Posted on October 20, 2008
  • Back for the Future
    Progressives at the Democratic National Convention look to FDR as a model for an Obama presidencyPosted on September 15, 2008
  • Dixie Turning Blue
    Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner's tepid keynote address to the Democratic convention… morePosted on August 27, 2008
  • Moving Obama Left
    After Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) secured his party's nomination in June, his… morePosted on August 25, 2008
IN THESE TIMES COMMUNITY MEMBERS

Popularity

In These Times is published in Chicago. We’ve been around since 1976, fighting for workers’ rights, corporate accountability and progressive government. In other words, a better world. more

Copyright © 2008 In These Times