Why the WTO Doha Round Talks Have Collapsed – and a Path Forward [5]
论文作者:佚名论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-06-17编辑:anne点击率:11174
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关键词:WTOPath Forwardglobal economysocial“neoliberalism”Bush administration’s
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “progress [toward reducing hunger] has slowed significantly in Asia and stalled completely worldwide” in the last 15 years. It was the goal of the world’s handful of multinational grain trading giants, including a former Cargill executive who as a U.S. trade official drafted the WTO farm rules which forced the world to treat food like any other commodity. This system has failed with horrific results and must be replaced.
The livelihoods of billions of subsistence farmers have been pitted against the profits of corporate agribusiness and grain trading companies with success measured as greater volume of food moving around in trade, not in decreasing hunger. The Indian government has confirmed that at least 100,000 farmers who have lost their livelihoods to this scandalous system have committed suicide in the WTO decade. Meanwhile, for the first time in generations the United States is headed for net food-importer status (imports outpaced exports in April 2006) even as we are the world’s largest agriculture exporter (often of the same foods we import) U.S. farmers’ incomes have tanked, while profits of corporate agribusiness giants have soared.
Another pillar of the WTO model is the massive expansion of corporate patent monopolies. The WTO’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPS), which sets 20-year worldwide monopoly marketing rights on drugs and seed varieties, is the single greatest protectionism agreement in the world. Forcing governments worldwide to provide monopoly protection for every seed variety or medicine that Big Pharma and Agribusiness patent has meant vastly increasing prices for consumers in rich and poor countries alike – and many cut off of these life sustaining goods.
Instead of having to adhere to new restrictions on trade that protect corporate profits, countries must be free to prioritize other values and goals, particularly regarding the saving of millions of lives by getting access to low-cost life-saving drugs. For example, African nations facing the HIV-AIDS epidemic must be free to decide that access to essential medicines takes priority over U.S. pharmaceutical profits, even if those corporations are one of the largest lobbies on trade in the United States.
The Way Forward: Saving Global Trade from the WTO
Taken together, the evidence points conclusively to a global shift away from the neo-liberal corporate globalization model embodied by the WTO based on people’s experience of the model’s failure. With the Doha Round’s collapse, the story to be written is about viable alternatives to the WTO - as well as to the bilateral or regional trade agreements based on the same failed model.
Instead of pinning blame on specific countries, the focus of energy should be on how the world’s governments can develop a multilateral trade system that preserves the benefits of trade for growth and development, while pruning away the many anti-democratic constraints on domestic policy making contained in the existing WTO rules. These rules are designed to create a world that operates as one single homogenized global market rather than setting terms of trade between separate nations with distinct priorities.
The critics of corporate globalization are for international trade between different, unique countries or regions when it is mutually beneficial. To strike this balance between promoting trade while respecting the laws and val
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