Waarom de WTO geen oplossingen biedt (OWINFS, 19 juli 2008)

On Eve of “mini-Ministerial”, the
WTO Faces Opposition Worldwide

Countries
Need Real Solutions to the Food and Climate Crises, Not an Expansion
of WTO; US has No Legal Authority to Sign a Potential Deal

World Trade Organization (WTO)
Director General Pascal Lamy is making a last-minute attempt to push
through a Doha deal by calling for a mini-Ministerial in Geneva on
July 21-25, despite wide divergences in political positions within
the areas of negotiation, and despite the fact the United States has
no authority to sign any potential conclusion. Given the real
tragedies of the ongoing food price crisis, lack of adequate
development progress in many developing countries, crises in the
financial markets, and the impending global climate catastrophe,
governments must be allowed to preserve the policy space necessary to
enact real solutions to these juggernaut challenges. On the basis of
past experience with WTO policies, as well as current projections for
minimal economic “gains” but large economic “costs” from a
potential WTO Doha Round, WTO expansion is not in the economic
interests of the vast majority of the world. Global concerns have
shifted significantly since the Doha Round was launched, rendering it
useless to face the current political demands. Fortunately, current
international political dynamics have likewise shifted, giving rise
to the fact that more successful alternative policies are being
implemented. The Doha Round is likely to face another failure in
Geneva this week.

1. The
mini-Ministerial is an outrageous process maneuver – which will
exclude over four-fifths of the WTO’s membership – called by
Director General Pascal Lamy in a desperate attempt to conclude a
deal that most countries now realize will harm them.

Only
between 20 and 30 countries of the WTO’s 152-country membership
have been invited to participate in the mini-Ministerial set to begin
on July 21. Lamy himself decided who may attend and who is to be
excluded from the negotiations, and the list of invited member
countries is being held secret.ⁱ
As the Director General of the WTO, and the Chair of the operative
Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), Lamy has engaged in an enormous
power-grab by making decisions that will determine the future of the
WTO and the Doha Round which are beyond his mandate.

In
the past mini-Ministerial meetings have been highly criticized for
abrogating official WTO “consensus” policy and marginalizing the
vast majority of WTO members. This time, Lamy attempted to assuage
excluded members’ concerns about lack of transparency and
undemocratic process by also convening the TNC next week, alongside
exclusive and sometimes hastily convened “Green Room” meetings
where the real negotiations will occur. In addition, Lamy had
promised that whatever potential agreement might result from the
exclusive meetings would be taken to the General Council, set to
occur July 29-30, to seek approval, in keeping with the mandate of
the General Council as the decision-making body of the WTO. In a
letter sent to negotiators on July 14, however, Lamy pulled a bait
and switch – now setting out the process that the TNC set for
Saturday July 26^th
(which he chairs) will be the site for decision-making on the
potential results of the exclusive mini-Ministerial, rather than the
General Council.ⁱⁱ
Now stating that the General Council will only “take note” of the
outcome of the mini-Ministerial, Lamy has set up a procedure which
vastly limits the rights of the majority of WTO members to voice
their serious concerns with the recent texts, just released this past
July 10^th.

These
process shenanigans belie an underlying fundamental dynamic: the vast
majority of WTO countries do not appear to be interested in making a
deal, while only a few appear to be desperately pushing the majority
towards an attempted conclusion. A quick review of the major crises
facing the world, and the damage the WTO will do towards the
prospects for solving them, coupled with the negative impacts of past
WTO policies and poor projections for WTO gains, indicate that it is
in the interests of the vast majority of countries – and the vast
majority of people in all countries – to prevent the conclusion of
the Round.

2.
The United States has no authority to sign a potential Doha deal due
to Fast Track’s 2007 expiration; any deal “initialed” would be
re-negotiated by a future US president; and the Farm Bill locks in US
farm subsidies beyond the key demands of developing countries,ⁱⁱⁱ
for five years.

As
explained on July 14, 2008 in an Op-Ed by US trade lawyer Lori
Wallach in South Africa’s leading Business Daily:

“Negotiations do not normally
occur unless all parties have authority to make a deal. The Bush
administration has no authority to make binding commitments on trade
since losing Fast Track trade authority a year ago. …

“There is zero chance that
Congress will provide President Bush new Fast Track authority. The
congressional leadership has explicitly stated in writing that
it will not support further Fast Track for Bush.

“Further, at this juncture,
U.S. positions in the Doha Round negotiations cannot be relied upon
to represent what is politically viable in Congress. Bush is
desperate to repair his woeful legacy by being able to announce some
Doha breakthrough. Yet he is simultaneously 100 percent free of
responsibility to ensure such a deal could be passed by Congress.

“Countries making concessions
now, in reliance on Bush administration promises, will almost
certainly face additional or different demands from a new president,
who will be responsible for ensuring a deal can actually get through
Congress.

“The unreliability of Bush
administration representations is most obvious regarding agriculture.
U.S. negotiators are making offers that directly conflict with the
recent U.S. Farm Bill. … First, the new Farm Bill sets U.S. policy
for the next five years. More importantly Congress’ support for the
positions in this Farm Bill are so strong among Democrats and
Republicans alike that Congress overrode Bush’s veto to enact the
legislation by more than a two-thirds vote – twice! Yet, the Bush
administration continues to dangle bait– for instance regarding
subsidy levels – that it knows would be unacceptable in Congress.

“The political and legal
reality is that the United States will only be in a position to
engage honestly in Doha Round talks after the new president arrives.
…

“Then why do
countries seem to be willing to go along with this WTO ministerial?
The response I have heard from other countries’ WTO negotiators is
uniform: they know about the U.S. situation and the severe danger of
proceeding, but no country wants to be blamed for raising it. Thus,
allow me to state the obvious publicly and let the blame come back
here to Washington: the emperor has no clothes!”^iv

3.
The food crisis – one of the greatest human rights catastrophes of
our time – could push 100 million people into extreme poverty,
according to UN estimates. This crisis of epic proportions will be
exacerbated, not resolved,^v
by the potential conclusion of the Doha Round.

This
past June, over 250 major farmer organizations, NGOs, trade unions
and social movements from over 50 countries delivered a strong snub
to WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, in his push to conclude the
Doha Round as a “solution” to the global food crisis.^vi

Lamy
was attending the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
High-Level Conference on food security. Groups including ActionAid
International, Africa Trade Network, Asian Peasant Coalition,
Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (Latin
American Coordination of Rural Movements, CLOC), Oxfam International,
and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy sent a letter to
Lamy as well as Trade and Agriculture Ministers saying that the
answer to skyrocketing prices of basic staples “does not lie in
deeper deregulation of food production and trade.”

The
letter continued:

“The
global food system is in crisis. Millions of people can no longer
afford or access the food they need, increasing global hunger and
malnutrition. The worlds’ governments need to act now. But the
answer does not lie in deeper deregulation of food production and
trade.

“We
believe the Doha Round as is currently envisioned will further
intensify
the crisis by making food prices more volatile, increasing developing
countries’ dependence on imports, and strengthening the power of
multinational agribusiness in food and agricultural markets.
Developing countries are likely to lose further policy space in their
agriculture sector, which would in turn limit their ability to deal
with the current crisis and to strengthen the livelihoods of small
producers.

“The
inability to manage the current food crisis is an illustration of the
failure of three decades of market deregulation in agriculture. We
need a new model for the trading system that puts development,
employment and food security objectives at the centre.”

Finding
real solutions to the food crisis must take precedence over a rushed
effort to push through a Doha deal that would negatively impact
hundreds of millions of farmers in countries worldwide.

Over
the last several decades, developing countries have been pushed –
often through policy conditionalities imposed by the World Bank and
IMF – to reduce or eradicate supports for domestic production of
food, in favor of increasing trade in food. This has led to an
increased dependence on foreign markets, as two-thirds of developing
countries are now net food importers. A recent leaked report by the
World Bank cited a sudden switch from food production to biofuels in
the US and other rich countries as responsible for three-fourths of
the dramatic rise in food prices.^vii
In the face of unpredictable and unregulated world markets,
developing countries must have the tools at their disposal to provide
for their domestic food needs to ensure food security.

A
parallel issue in the Doha negotiations on agriculture relates to the
developing countries’ demand for policy tools to combat dumping,
or the selling of products below the cost of production – a
practice which contributed to the devastation of developing country
food production systems. A group of 46 countries called the G33,
representing about 80% of global population, have formed an alliance
to demand exemptions for certain key food products from tariff
reductions, as well as the ability to increase tariffs on products
that face dumping. These tools, called Special Products and Special
Safeguard Mechanism, are key to ensuring food security, rural
development, and farmer’s livelihood security.^viii
In particular, the G33 demand that some SP’s be fully exempted from
tariff cuts, and that the tools of the SSM include allowing a country
to raise its tariff rates above current levels (those consolidated in
the Uruguay Round). Yet the rich countries are demanding severe
limitations on these flexibilities – which, if implemented, would
render the policies nearly useless. The fight over SP/SSM exposes the
hypocrisy of Doha as a “Development” Round, and will likely be a
key “deal-breaker” issue in the negotiations this week.

4. Trade
unions worldwide have raised the alarm about the anti-development
impacts of a potential Doha Round conclusion, as tariff cuts demanded
by rich countries would result in massive job loss in developing
countries across the globe.

Along
with Agriculture, one of the key areas of negotiation in the Doha
Round involves the reduction of tariffs on non-agricultural
manufactured goods, and natural resources, referred to as Non
Agricultural Market Access or NAMA. As Europe, the United States, and
other rich countries were developing, they used the key policy tool
of tariffs to protect nascent industries from foreign competition. As
they grew competitive, they reduced these tariffs voluntarily to
promote consumer savings. These reductions occurred over the last 50
years during the seven rounds of negotiations of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the precursor to the WTO. Now
these rich countries seek to pry open the markets of developing
countries by pressuring them to reduce tariffs. The International
Trade Union Confederation has run economic models demonstrating that
the reductions demanded of the developing countries would result in
severe job losses across textile, chemical, leather, wood products,
electronics, automobile, and many other sectors.

A
group of the developing countries that would be the hardest hit by
these tariff cuts, called the “NAMA 11” countries, has fought to
preserve the mandate of the negotiations that rich countries must
provide more market access to developing country exports than the
market access opened to them by developing countries (the principle
of “less than full reciprocity”). In contrast, the actual
negotiations contemplate using a so-called “Swiss formula with
coefficient” resulting in tariff reductions of 30% by the rich
countries, but approximately 60% by the developing countries! Given
the very limited flexibilities being discussed for developing
countries (far less than the flexibilities being discussed for the
rich countries in agriculture), these tariff cuts would have
devastating impacts on jobs, development, and future policy space to
promote key strategic industries for developing countries. The most
recent negotiating texts reflects many of the demands of corporate
interests in the US and Europe, and does not maintain the policy
space nor flexibilities demanded by the NAMA 11.

As
a result, trade unions have reacted strongly against every new draft
text in recent years, calling on governments to preserve the tools
necessary to implement smart development policies, including the one
used most extensively by rich countries on their road to development:
protective tariffs. Statements developed by a coalition of trade
unions fighting on the negotiations have demanded the NAMA 11 to
maintain demands on respecting the principle of less than full
reciprocity; for an increase in the percentages for the flexibilities
without accepting a lower coefficient; for the possibility to both
select tariffs lines that are exempted from tariff cuts and that are
subject to half the formula cuts; and to allow for flexibilities to
be changed over time. Likewise, Latin American trade unions have
raised additional concerns that the tariff cuts would increase
dependence on rich-country markets and undermine the overarching
Latin American goal of regional integration.^ix

This
issue has become a top concern of the negotiations, and could well be
a deal-breaker in Geneva. Based on the text agreed to at the Hong
Kong Ministerial, the level of “ambition” in NAMA (the key
developed-country offensive interest) must be balanced by the level
of “ambition” in agriculture (the key offensive interest to many
developing countries.) However, the negotiations – including the
most recent texts released on July 10 – demonstrate increasing
accommodation of developed country offensive and defensive positions
at the expense of the needs and positions of the poor countries.^x

5. The ongoing
crisis in the financial markets calls attention to the need for
increased regulation, not further liberalization and deregulation,
which are key demands of developed countries in the Doha
negotiations.

In
a July 18, 2008 article in the Financial
Times, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson
reiterated claims – unsupported by evidence – that a conclusion
to the Doha Round was necessary to give a confidence boost to the
global economy, to help it deal with the climate, food, and energy
crises.^xi
In reality, the liberalizations of key service sector markets
demanded by the EU and US – in particular energy and finance –
would allow for further market volatility and show no indication of
being able to provide stabilizing solutions.

This
is far from realistic. It is well known that the lack of adequate
transparency, oversight and regulation of the increasingly complex
financial markets has been a major contributory factor to the
financial crisis. Financial service deregulation and liberalization
is a key demand of developed countries in the Doha Round. If it were
to be adopted, the most recent Chair’s text on Services would
expand liberalization and deregulation in many service sectors
including finance.

As
noted by a recent article sent to trade negotiators:

“New commitments in
financial services will prevent governments from making interventions
in the financial industry and on financial markets to curb
speculative and destructive activities and financial products,
including derivative trading in commodities and food in times of
crises and rising prices.”^xii

But
financial services is not the only area of concern. On July 14, 2008
a letter was sent by 73 organizations to WTO members expressing
concerns about the dramatic new demands being made on developing
countries in the GATS negotiations.

“It is well known
that the US and the EU, supported by Japan, Canada, Australia and
other industrialized countries, have been insisting that developing
countries make major concessions in terms of market access in
services in exchange for movement in agriculture and NAMA before the
Doha Round can be concluded. Key sectors of developing country
economies have been targeted for market access and national treatment
including – financial services, energy services, telecom services,
education services, environment services and tourism services.”^xiii

The
recent Chair’s texts goes way beyond the Doha mandate, calling on
countries to commit current levels of liberalization to WTO
disciplines permanently, as well as for making liberalization
commitments in Services a pre-requisite for achieving basic
development balance in the agriculture negotiations – yet they were
only included in the Doha mandate to begin with based on the promise
that Services openings would be completely voluntary for developing
countries.

6.
The current “trade” model embodied in the WTO exacerbates the
climate crisis by contributing to global warming. If concluded, the
WTO expansion through Doha would further erode policy space on the
national and international level to combat the climate crisis.

The
WTO model of trade is making global warming worse, instead of
stepping aside and allowing more space for governments to work
towards real solutions. According to a new report:

“Though often
overlooked, irresponsible trade practices contribute dramatically to
global warming— increasing the volumes and distances of goods
shipped, enabling rapid deforestation, and thwarting
environmentally-friendly production requirements. Deforestation
alone, much of it driven by the trade of illegally logged timber, now
accounts for one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, according
to the Stern report on the economics of climate change, which
documents the impacts and costs of global warming.”^xiv

Current
negotiations towards a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases
must have available a full range of policy options in order to find
the best mix of solutions that will reduce emissions, while ensuring
that those who are responsible for causing global warming are also
responsible for reducing it. WTO rules should not prevent countries
from using the most effective solutions.

7. The failure
of the policies of the WTO “Washington consensus” economic model
– including its implementation by its ideological sisters, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – to produce
real economic growth and poverty reduction have undermined support
for expansion of the WTO.

When
the WTO was debated worldwide in 1994, proponents promised increased
rates of economic growth and poverty reduction. In developing
countries that had been forced to adopt the same policy package as
conditionalities for their IMF or World Bank loans, people already
had decades of experience with the model’s many downsides and
growth failures.

During
the WTO decade, economic conditions for the majority have
deteriorated. The number and percentage of people living on less than
$1 a day (the World Bank definition of extreme poverty) in regions
with some of the worst forms of poverty – Sub-Saharan Africa and
the Middle East – have increased since the WTO began operating,^xv
while the number and percentage of people living on less than $2 a
day has increased at the same time in these regions, as well as in
Latin America and the Caribbean.^xvi
Growth rates in these regions have also slowed dramatically since the
implementation of the neo-liberal policy package. In Latin America,
from 1960 to 1980, per capita income grew by 82 percent, while from
1980 to 2000, income per person grew only 9 percent. From 2000 to
2005, income per capita has grown 4 percent.^xvii
Similarly, in Africa, per capita income grew around 40 percent from
1960 to 1980 and shrank
more than
10 percent from
1980 to 1998.^xviii

The
number of people living in poverty has also increased in South Asia,
while growth rates and the rate of reduction in poverty have slowed
in most parts of the world – especially when one excludes China,
where huge reductions in poverty have been accomplished, but not by
following WTO-approved policies (China became a WTO member only in
2001).^xix
Indeed, the economic policies that China employed to obtain its
dramatic growth and poverty reduction are a veritable smorgasbord of
WTO violations: high tariffs to keep out imports and significant
subsidies and government intervention to promote exports; an absence
of intellectual property protection; government-owned, operated and
subsidized energy, transportation and manufacturing sectors; tightly
regulated foreign investment with numerous performance requirements
regarding domestic content and technology transfer;
government-controlled finance and banking systems subsidizing
billions in non-performing debt; and government-controlled,
subsidized and protected agriculture. Many of these same policies are
those employed by the now-wealthy countries during their period of
development.

It’s
not as if the WTO has increased wealth for most people in developed
countries either. During the WTO era, the U.S. trade deficit has
risen to historic levels – from $130 billion (in today’s dollars)
in 1994 (the year before the WTO went into effect) to $700 billion in
2007. The U.S. trade deficit is close to 6 percent of national income
– a figure widely agreed to be unsustainable, putting the United
States and global economy at risk.^xx
Soaring U.S. imports during the WTO decade have contributed to the
loss of nearly one in six U.S. manufacturing jobs. U.S. real median
wages have scarcely risen above their 1970 level, while productivity
has soared 82 percent over the same period, resulting in declining or
stagnant standards of living for the nearly 70 percent of the U.S.
population that does not have a college degree.^xxi

8.
Projected gains from a WTO expansion are meager, while many countries
are projected to experience net losses.

Proponents
of the Doha Round agenda regularly attempt to shift the debate away
from the actual record of WTO performance and instead repeat
endlessly the mantra that the Doha is a Development Round which
represents developing countries’ best chance for reducing global
poverty. The World Bank initially projected that the Round would
deliver $832 billion in increased global wealth – but was
criticized for using a methodology widely considered unrealistic.^xxii

More
recent World Bank studies based on revised analysis found extremely
limited potential gains from a “Doha Round” overall. The most
likely Doha scenario the World Bank reviewed could produce benefits
of only $16 billion for developing countries and $96 billion to the
world by 2015, meaning the developing country share of Doha gains
would be a fraction of the developed countries’ gains. These
projections of gains amount to 0.14 percent of projected developing
country GDPand about 0.23 percent of world GDP, respectively. Put
another way, it is a little less than one cent per person per day to
the developing world, or about four cents per person per day to the
world as a whole.^xxiii

Worse,
the new research revealed that 50 percent of the limited gains for
developing countries under a scenario of total liberalization (which
Doha would not have achieved) would go to only eight countries:
Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey and
Vietnam. And under the “likely” Doha scenario, the Middle East,
Bangladesh, Mexico, and much of Africa would actually face net
losses.^xxiv

More
recent studies showed that the alleged gains for Brazil and India
with the Doha Round would be largely concentrated in those countries’
agribusiness and manufacturing industries, respectively. At the same
time, subsistence farmers – a much larger percentage of the
population in those countries – would see tiny gains or even net
losses.^xxv
Likewise, even gains to these two supposed “winners” in
agricultural and manufacturing liberalization would be offset by
increased costs from liberalization of sensitive service sectors and
loss in tariff revenues.^xxvi

In
addition, several of these studies are deeply flawed in that they
tout “gains” while failing to take into consideration the “costs”
of implementing the Doha Round. First of all, the economic models
used in the studies “assume full employment.” That means they
capture alleged savings on consumer food prices as gains, but fail to
show a loss if millions of subsistence farmers, who represent nearly
half of the developing world, lose their livelihoods. In addition,
they fail to include the increased costs that consumers worldwide pay
for medicines due to pharmaceutical monopolies, which some economists
estimate outweigh the projected gains, even for the few developing
country “winners.” And finally, the models fail to adequately
take into account the loss in tariff revenue for developing
countries, which the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development estimated would be 2 to 4 times the projected gains for
developing countries from the Doha WTO expansion. These flaws have
rarely been mentioned in media reports touting alleged “gains”
for the poor.

The
debate about the projected “gains” or “losses” from a
potential Doha conclusion is important to understanding the current
political dynamic because many countries reluctantly entered into WTO
expansion talks at Doha in 2001 only after being promised a
“development” round aimed at rectifying imbalances in the Uruguay
Round. That “development” round has failed to materialize.

9.
International political dynamics have shifted, giving rise to the
fact that more successful alternative policies are being implemented.

The
current globalization model implemented by the WTO is also being
challenged increasingly by large numbers of economists and
legislators, and civil society worldwide, based on the evidence of
the model’s poor performance in achieving its alleged goals. This
reality has generated significant political backlash in numerous
countries against the model of the WTO. Likewise, developing
countries are experimenting with innovative policies that are
delivering far more growth, and putting an increased value on
resource nationalization and regional integration, both of which are
resulting in economic gains far greater than those projected for
developing countries from Doha.

The
rejection of the neo-liberal model implemented by the WTO has been
especially prevalent throughout Latin America, where recent years
have seen a wave of elections ushering in leaders who have made
rejection of this agenda a staple of their platforms. In 2002,
Argentina elected President Néstor Kirchner, who ran on an
anti-neoliberal platform. Since then, Argentina has enjoyed the
highest level of growth in Latin America, bringing 10 million people
over the poverty line. His wife, Christina Fernandez, was elected
last year on the basis of continuing his economic expansion. In
1998, the people of Venezuela elected Hugo Chávez to the presidency
in a rejection of his predecessors’ commitment to the neo-liberal
agenda. Venezuela has enjoyed the second-highest growth rate in the
hemisphere in the last five years, and has cut poverty in half.

In
2003, Bolivia’s then-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was
forced to resign and flee the country, primarily to his continuance
of neo-liberal policies implemented there over the last 20 years,
which have resulted in a lower per capita GDP today in Bolivia than
27 years ago and two-thirds of the population living below the
poverty line.^xxvii
Bolivia’s new President, Evo Morales, was elected in 2006 on a
platform of opposition to this flawed globalization model. As a
result of Morales’ re-nationalization of hydrocarbons, Bolivian
national revenues from oil and gas have increased from $300 million
to over $1.5 billion, providing essential revenues for South
America’s poorest nation.

In
other countries such as Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, and most recently,
Paraguay, candidates favoring alternative policies beat out
“neoliberal” proponents with the victories of Luis Ignacio “Lula”
da Silva, Tabaré Vazquez, US-trained economist Rafael Correa, and
pro-poor former bishop, Fernando Lugo, respectively. In the last few
years, conomic growth in Latin America has been increasingly rapidly
for the first time since 1980.

In
several other countries, elections have been dominated by debates
over trade liberalization, such as in Costa Rica, where fair traders
nearly defeated a referendum on the Central America-US Free Trade
Agreement, a defeat many ascribe to intervention in that country’s
electoral process by the Bush administration. Likewise, Mexico’s
presidential elections in 2006 were dominated by a debate over the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with Andrés Manuel
López Obrador — who pushed repeatedly during his campaign for a
renegotiation of NAFTA — being narrowly defeated by ruling party
candidate Felipe Calderón in an election marred by substantial
allegations of irregularities.

Finally,
the re-nationalization of utilities and natural resources taking
place around the globe is also indicative of this rejection of the
WTO model. In the last eight years, several cities in Bolivia have
rejected private water contracts held by foreign companies. Peru,
Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico have also seen recent protests against
privatization of essential services. Re-nationalization of key
sectors has produced impressive results in some of the cases where
it’s recently been tried. After the Bolivian government
re-nationalized its hydrocarbons sector in 2006, total revenues for
the combined public sector increased to 40.2 percent of GDP (from
27.5 percent in 2004), with most of this increase due to the
government’s policies in the hydrocarbons sector. Increases in
natural gas prices have made these changes even more important. And
in the five years following the re-nationalization of oil in
Venezuela, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has grown by more than 87
percent, with only a small part of this growth being in oil. The
unemployment and poverty rates have been cut in half and real
(inflation-adjusted) social spending per person has increased by more
than 300 percent.^xxviii

Looked
at together, the trend is clear: Latin American electorates are
systematically rejecting the “trade liberalization” model of the
WTO. There is increasing consensus that the rejection is based on the
clear failure of the model to deliver economic growth, and that
alternative policies and regional integration are providing more
opportunities for growth and development.

The
election of leaders seeking alternatives to the failed trade policies
of the past, the failure of the United States to systematically
expand the WTO/NAFTA model, and the massive social movements against
service privatization and in favor of resource nationalization and
regional integration are clear signs of a broad scale rejection of
the current model of corporate globalization based on the experience
of its failure, and a successful, though nascent, search for more
successful development paradigms.

10. The Doha
Round is likely to face another failure in Geneva this week. The
world’s energies must not, however, shift towards further
negotiations of the same trade model on a bilateral or regional
basis. Instead, a new model of governing multilateral trade must be
developed, in the context of the current global priorities of
ensuring food security, promoting global economic growth and
stability, and halting global warming.

The
likely failure of Lamy’s attempts to push through a Doha Round will
be a great victory for social movements around the world who have
campaigned for this outcome, as well as for people globally.

The
evidence points conclusively to a global shift away from the
neo-liberal trade model embodied by the WTO based on people’s
experience of the model’s failure. With the Doha Round’s
collapse, policy space desperately needed to tackle the real
challenges facing the world will be preserved.

However,
the “moral” of a Doha failure should not be to blame individual
countries, nor to shift focus towards negotiating the same (and
sometimes more extreme) set of policies through bilateral and
regional negotiations, as the United States, the EU, Canada, Japan
and Australia are pushing with nearly all developing countries.
Instead, the focus should be on how the world’s governments can
develop a more democratic multilateral trade system that takes
advantage of the benefits of trade for growth and development, while
ensuring that international agreements and negotiations on
agriculture, energy, climate, human rights, and labor rights enjoy
primacy over trade.

Over
two hundred civil society organizations, including social movements
representing millions of people in poor and rich countries alike,
support a WTO transformation program called “Stop Corporate
Globalization: Another World is Possible.” Just as importantly,
emphasis and political capital must be utilized to solve the truly
global crises of food prices, economic instability and climate
change.

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