[mobglob-discuss] Corporate Globalization Marches On - "Get US Out of WTO"

[Gordon Flett]

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Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 09:06:05 -0700
From: Caspar Davis <prana4 at shaw.ca>
Subject: [NS2/CNS2] Corporate Globalization Marches On

A reminder that there are other issues going forwards besides Iraq and
SARS.

PLEASE do not adopt the Orwellian euphemism  "free trade" when
referring to corporate globalization. The most important provisions
of "free trade" treaties have nothing to do with trade but a great
deal to do with the power of "investors" - i.e. transnational
corporations - to impose their toxic products and their social
agendas on unwilling governments.

Thanks to Janet Eaton:

http://www.populist.com/03.08.edit.html

EDITORIAL

Get US Out of WTO

Perhaps the best thing that can come out of the invasion of Iraq
(other than the freeing of its people from the rule of Saddam
Hussein) is the backlash by the rest of the world against the US
government's demonstration that it will do what is in the interest of
its business elites, backed by its unparalleled military force,
regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.

Free-trade talks with Morocco, moved from Rabat to Geneva amid
security concerns, now may be delayed, as Moroccan officials fear
rising anti-US sentiment, the Wall Street Journal reported April 4. A
US-Chile deal, finalized in December, faces trouble in Congress after
Chile refused to back the war resolution at the United Nations. Some
Congress members are hesitant to extend normal trade relations to
Russia, which also opposed the use of force in Iraq.

US Trade Rep. Robert Zoellick (a former lobbyist for Enron) hopes to
reach an agreement on a trade deal with Central American nations by
the end of the year. Leftist presidents in Brazil and Venezuela might
stand in the way of plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (or,
as Jim Hightower refers to it, "NAFTA on Steroids"). And given war
rifts with Europe and Moslem nations, global talks at the World Trade
Organization aren't expected to be finished by a deadline of the end
of next year. Only five countries - Australia, Canada, Japan, New
Zealand and the US - met the March 31 deadline to file offers of
areas to be opened up to foreign companies under the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

Globalization sounds good, as "free trade" promises to open every
nation's industry to foreign trade, eliminate stodgy old tariffs and
welcome foreign corporations to do business in a worldwide free
market. But as Greg Palast noted in his excellent book, The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy (recently published by Plume in an updated US
paperback edition), the "free trade" story also involves cutting
pensions, cutting welfare, cutting subsidies that help farmers and
industry compete against lower-cost producers and letting health and
labor standards fall to the lowest common denominator.

Palast, a California native, now practices investigative journalism
for the BBC and the Guardian and Observer newspapers in London
because, he quips, investigative reporting has become illegal in the
US. Palast writes about an unassuming six-page WTO memo he got his
hands on, a summary of a March 2001 meeting of member nations' trade
ministers that was supposed to remain secret. The memo set out the
trade group's plan of attack on the regulatory authority of
governments. GATS proposes to replace sovereignty with a "necessity
test" that allows GATS dispute panels, meeting in secret, to
determine if a law or regulation is "more burdensome than necessary."
If the panel decides the law or regulation is too burdensome, the
government will be required to relax it or reimburse affected
corporations for damages.

A similar provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement
allowed a Canadian producer of the gasoline additive MBTE to sue the
state of California for banning the additive after it was found to
contaminate water supplies. The Canadians argued that there were
other, less trade restrictive ways to prevent the additive from
leaking into groundwater. Now California has the choice of backing
down and allowing the pollutant to remain as a gasoline additive or
pay the producer nearly $1 billion in damages.

Environmental groups have sued to halt the Bush administration's
proposed change to the popular "dolphin-safe" labeling law for tuna
after the White House announced on Dec. 31, 2002, that it planned to
weaken the rules protecting dolphins from encirclement nets used to
catch tuna. Since 1992, the US has been under orders to weaken the
dolphin law after it was ruled to be an illegal trade barrier by an
international tribunal under the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT).

Under GATS the "more burdensome than necessary" standard is even more
business-friendly than "least trade restrictive" standard in NAFTA,
Palast says. Among other things, he writes, GATS would prevent local
governments from adopting zoning rules prohibiting giant retail
stores such as Wal-Mart. The March 2001 memo specifies that trade
ministers agreed that simply "safeguarding the public interest" would
not be an acceptable defense for a regulation that limited businesses.

The memo suggests, "It may well be politically more acceptable to
countries to accept international obligations which give primacy to
economic efficiency." In other words, unaccountable GATS can do
things that rulers know their Congress or parliaments would never
accept.

We believe in fair trade rules that raise labor and health
regulations to the standards of the developed world, instead of
reducing them to the level of the Third World. It might be too much
to hope that the worldwide fear and resentment of George W. Bush and
his cronies will ungrease the skids of globalization, but it's worth
a try. If the US is too good to surrender its sovereignty to the UN
or the World Court, it shouldn't knuckle under to the World Trade
Organization either.

<< end of forwarded material >>

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Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso at e-scape.net>
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