[asia-apec 1379] WTO Reform?
Anuradha Mittal
amittal at foodfirst.org
Wed Jan 19 03:32:42 JST 2000
Why Reform of the WTO is the Wrong Agenda
By Walden Bello*
In the wake of the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial, there has
emerged the opinion that reform of the WTO is now the program that NGOs,
governments, and citizens must embrace. The collapse of the WTO
Ministerial is said to provide a unique window of opportunity for a
reform agenda.
Cited by some as a positive sign is United States Trade Representative
Charlene Barshefsky's comment, immediately after the collapse of the
Seattle Ministerial, that "the WTO has outgrown the processes
appropriate to an earlier time." An increasing and necessary view,
generally shared among the members, was that we needed a process which
had a greater degree of internal transparency and inclusion to
accommodate a larger and more diverse membership." (1)
Also seen as an encouraging gesture is UK Secretary of State for
Trade and Industry Stephen Byers' recent statement to Commonwealth Trade
Ministers in New Delhi that the "WTO will not be able to continue in its
present form. There has to be fundamental and radical change in order
for it to meet the needs and aspirations of all 134 of its members." (2)
These are, in our view, damage control statements and provide little
indication of the seriousness about reform of the two governments that
were, pre-Seattle, the stoutest defenders of the inequalities built into
the structure, dynamics, and objectives of the WTO. It is unfortunate
that they are now being cited to convince developing
countries and NGOs to take up an agenda of reform that could lead
precisely to the strengthening of an organization that is very
fundamentally flawed.
What civil society, North and South, should instead be doing at this
point is radically cutting down the power of the institution and
reducing it to simply another institution in a pluralistic world trading
system with multiple systems of governance.
Does World Trade Need the World Trade Organization?
This is the fundamental question on which the question of reform
hinges.
World trade did not need the WTO to expand 17-fold between 1948 and
1997, from $124 billion to $10,772 billion.(3) This expansion took
place under the flexible GATT trade regime. The WTO's founding in 1995
did not respond to a collapse or crisis of world trade such as happened
in the 1930's. It was not necessary for global peace, since no world
war or trade-related war had taken place during that period. In the
seven major inter-state wars that took place in that period-the Korean
War of 1950-53, the Vietnam War of 1945-75, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the
1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1982 Falklands
War, and the Gulf War of 1990-trade conflict did not figure even
remotely as a cause.
GATT was, in fact, functioning reasonably well as a framework for
liberalizing world trade. Its dispute-settlement system was flexible
and with its recognition of the "special and differential status" of
developing countries, it provided the space in a global economy for
Third World countries to use trade policy for development and
industrialization.
Why was the WTO established following the Uruguay Round of 1986-94? Of
the major trading powers, Japan was very ambivalent, concerned as it was
to protect its agriculture as well as its particular system of
industrial production that, through formal and informal mechanisms, gave
its local producers primary right to exploit the domestic market. The
EU, well on the way of becoming a self-sufficient trading bloc, was
likewise ambivalent, knowing that its highly subsidized system in
agriculture would come under attack. Though demanding greater access to
their manufactured and agricultural products in the Northern economies,
the developing countries did not see this as being accomplished through
a comprehensive agreement enforced by a powerful trade bureaucracy but
through discrete negotiations and agreements in
the model of the Integrated Program for Commodities (IPCs) and Commodity
Stabilization Fund agreed upon under the aegis of UNCTAD in the late
seventies.
The founding of the WTO served primarily the interest of the United
States. Just as it was the US which blocked the founding of the
International Trade Organization (ITO) in 1948, when it felt that this
would not serve its position of overwhelming economic dominance in the
post-war world, so it was the US that became the dominant lobbyist for
the comprehensive Uruguay Round and the founding of the WTO in late
eighties and early nineties, when it felt that more competitive global
conditions had created a situation where its corporate interests now
demanded an opposite stance.
Just as it was the US's threat in the 1950's to leave GATT if it was
not allowed to maintain protective mechanisms for milk and other
agricultural products that led to agricultural trade's exemption from
GATT rules, so was it US pressure that brought agriculture into the
GATT-WTO system in 1995. And the reason for Washington's change of mind
was articulated quite candidly by then US Agriculture Secretary John
Block at the start of the Uruguay Round negotiations in 1986: "[The]
idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism
from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by
relying on US agricultural products, which are available, in most cases
at much lower cost."(4) Washington, of course, did not just have
developing country markets in mind, but also Japan, South Korea, and the
European Union.
It was the US that mainly pushed to bring services under WTO coverage,
with its assessment that the in the new burgeoning area of international
services, and particularly in financial services, its
corporations had a lead that needed to be preserved. It was also
the US that pushed to expand WTO jurisdiction to the so-called
"Trade-Related Investment Measures" (TRIMs) and "Trade-Related
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)." The first sought to eliminate
barriers to the system of internal cross-border trade of product
components among TNC (transnational corporations) subsidiaries
that had been imposed by developing countries in order to develop
their industries; the second to consolidate the US advantage in the
cutting-edge knowledge-intensive industries.
And it was the US that forced the creation of the WTO's formidable
dispute-resolution and enforcement mechanism after being frustrated with
what US trade officials considered weak GATT efforts to enforce rulings
favorable to the US. As Washington's academic point man on trade, C.
Fred Bergsten, head of the Institute of International Economics, told
the US Senate, the strong WTO dispute settlement mechanism serves US
interests because "we can now use the full weight of the international
machinery to go after those trade barriers, reduce them, get them
eliminated."(5)
In sum, it has been Washington's changing perception of the needs
of its economic interest-groups that have shaped and reshaped the
international trading regime. It was not global necessity that gave
birth to the WTO in 1995. It was the US's assessment that the interests
of its corporations were no longer served by a loose and
flexible GATT but needed an all-powerful and wide-ranging WTO.
>From the free-market paradigm that underpins it, to the rules and
regulations set forth in the different agreements that make up the
Uruguay Round, to its system of decision-making and accountability, the
WTO is a blueprint for the global hegemony of Corporate America. It
seeks to institutionalize the accumulated advantages of US corporations.
Is the WTO necessary? Yes, to the United States. But not to the rest
of the world. The necessity of the WTO is one of the biggest lies of
our time, and its acceptance is due to the same propaganda principle
practised by Joseph Goebbels: if you repeat a lie often enough, it will
be taken as truth.
Can the WTO Serve the Interests of the Developing Countries?
But what about the developing countries? Is the WTO a necessary
structure--one that, whatever its flaws, brings more benefits than
costs, and would therefore merit efforts at reform?
When the Uruguay Round was being negotiated, there was considerable lack
of enthusiasm for the process by the developing countries. After all,
these countries had formed the backbone of UNCTAD, which, with its
system of one-country/one-vote and majority voting, they felt was an
international arena more congenial to their interests. They entered the
Uruguay Round greatly resenting the large trading powers' policy of
weakening and marginalizing UNCTAD in the late seventies and early
eighties.Largely passive spectators, with a great number not even
represented during the negotiations owing to resource constraints, the
developing countries were dragged into unenthusiastic
endorsement of the Marrakesh Accord of 1994 that sealed the Uruguay
Round and established the WTO. True, there were somedeveloping
countries, most of them in the Cairns Group of developed and developing
country agro-exporters, that actively promoted the WTO in the hope that
they would gain greater market access to their exports, but they were a
small minority.
To try to sell the WTO to the South, US propagandists evoked the
fear that staying out of the WTO would result in a country's isolation
from world trade ("like North Korea") and stoked the promise that a
"rules-based system" of world trade would protect the weak countries
from unilateral acts by the big trading powers.
With their economies dominated by the IMF and the World Bank,
with the structural adjustment programs pushed by these agencies
having as a central element radical trade liberalization, much
weaker as a bloc owing to the debt crisis compared to the 1970's,
the height of the "New International Economic Order," most developing
country delegations felt they had no choice but to sign on the dotted
line.
Over the next few years, however, these countries realized that they had
signed away their right to employ a variety of critical trade
measures for development purposes.
In contrast to the loose GATT framework, which had allowed some space
for development initiatives, the comprehensive and tightened Uruguay
Round was fundamentally anti-development in its thrust.
This is evident in the following:
Loss of Trade Policy as Development Tool
In signing on to GATT, Third World countries were committed to
banning all quantitative restrictions on imports, reduce tariffs on
many industrial imports, and promise not to raise tariffs on all other
imports. In so doing, they have effectively given up the use of trade
policy to pursue industrialization objectives. The way that the
NICs, or "newly industrializing countries," made it to industrial
status, via the policy of import substitution, is now effectively
removed as a route to industrialization.
The anti-industrialization thrust of the GATT-WTO Accord is made
even more manifest in the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment
Measures (TRIMs) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPs). In their drive to industrialize, NICs like
South Korea and Malaysia made use of many innovative mechanisms such as
trade-balancing requirements that tied the value of a foreign investor's
imports of raw materials and components to the value of his or her
exports of the finished commodity, or "local content" regulations which
mandated that a certain percentage of the components that went into the
making of a product was sourced locally.
These rules indeed restricted the maneuvering space of foreign
investors, but they were successfully employed by the NICs to
marry foreign investment to national industrialization. They enabled
the NICs to raise income from capital-intensive exports, develop
support industries, bring in technology, while still protecting local
entrepreneurs' preferential access to the domestic market. In
Malaysia, for instance, the strategic use of local content policy
enabled the Malaysians to build a "national car," in cooperation
with Mitsubishi, that has now achieved about 80 per cent local content
and controls 70 per cent of the Malaysian market. Thanks to the TRIMs
accord, these mechanisms used are now illegal.
The Restriction of Technological Diffusion
Like the TRIMs agreement, the TRIPs regime is seen as effectively
opposed to the industrialization and development efforts of Third
World countries. This becomes clear from a survey of the economic
history not only of the NICs but of almost all late-industrializing
countries. A key factor in their industrial take-off was their
relatively easy access to cutting-edge technology: The US
industrialized, to a great extent by using but paying very little
for British manufacturing innovations, as did the Germans. Japan
industrialized by liberally borrowing US technological innovations,
but barely compensating the Americans for this. And the Koreans
industrialized by copying quite liberally and with little payment US
and Japanese product and process technologies.
But what is "technological diffusion" from the perspective of the late
industrializer is "piracy" from that of the industrial leader. The
TRIPs regime takes the side of the latter and makes the process of
industrialization by imitation much more difficult from hereon. It
represents what UNCTAD describes as "a premature strengthening
of the intellectual property system...that favors monopolistically
controlled innovation over broad-based diffusion."(6)
The TRIPs regime provides a generalized minimum patent
protection of 20 years; increases the duration of the protection for
semi-conductors or computer chips; institutes draconian border
regulations against products judged to be violating intellectual
property rights; and places the burden of proof on the presumed
violator of process patents.
The TRIPs accord is a victory for the US high-tech industry, which
has long been lobbying for stronger controls over the diffusion of
innovations. Innovation in the knowledge-intensive high-tech sector-
in electronic software and hardware, biotechnology, lasers, opto-
electronics, liquid crystal technology, to name a few-has become
the central determinant of economic power in our time. And when
any company in the NICs and Third World wishes to innovate, say
in chip design, software programming, or computer assembly, it
necessarily has to integrate several patented designs and
processes, most of them from US electronic hardware and software
giants like Microsoft, Intel, and Texas Instruments.(7) As the
Koreans have bitterly learned, exorbitant multiple royalty payments
to what has been called the American "high tech mafia" keeps
one's profit margins very low while reducing incentives for local
innovation.
The likely outcome is for a Southern manufacturer simply to pay
royalties for a technology rather than to innovate, thus perpetuating
the technological dependence on Northern firms.Thus, TRIPs enables the
technological leader, in this case the United States, to greatly
influence the pace of technological and industrial development in rival
industrialized countries, the NICs, and the Third World.
Watering Down the "Special and Differential Treatment"
Principle
The central principle of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development)--an organization disempowered by the establishment
of the WTO--is that owing to the critical nexus between trade and
development, developing countries must not be subjected to the
same expectations, rules, and regulations that govern trade among
the developed countries. Owing to historical and structural
considerations, developing countries need special consideration
and special assistance in leveling the playing field for them to be
able to participate equitably in world trade. This would include both
the use of protective tariffs for development purposes and
preferential access of developing country exports to developed
country markets.
While GATT was not centrally concerned with development, it did
recognize the "special and differential status" of the developing
countries. Perhaps the strongest statement of this was in the
Tokyo Round Declaration in 1973, which recognized "the
importance of the application of differential measures in developing
countries in ways which will provide special and more favourable
treatment for them in areas of negotiation where this is feasible."(8)
Different sections of the evolving GATT code allowed countries to
renegotiate tariff bindings in order to promote the establishment of
certain industries; allowed developing countries to use tariffs for
economic development and fiscal purposes; allowed them to use
quantitative restrictions to promote infant industries; and conceded
the principle of non-reciprocity by developing countries in trade
negotiation.(9) The 1979 Framework Agreement known at the
Enabling Clause also provided a permanent legal basis for General
System of Preferences (GSP) schemes that would provide
preferential access to developing country exports.(10)
A significant shift occurred in the Uruguay Round. GSP schemes
were not bound, meaning tariffs could be raised against developing
country until they equaled the bound rates applied to imports for all
sources. Indeed, during the negotiations, the threat to remove
GSP was used as "a form of bilateral pressure on developing
countries."(11) SDT was turned from a focus on a special right to
protect and special rights of market access to "one of responding
to special adjustment difficulties in developing countries stemming
from the implementation of WTO decisions."(12) Measures meant
to address the structural inequality of the trading system gave way
to measures, such as a lower rate of tariff reduction or a longer
time frame for implementing decisions, which regarded the problem
of developing countries as simply that of catching up in an
essentially even playing field.
STD has been watered down in the WTO, and this is not surprising
for the neoliberal agenda that underpins the WTO philosophy differs
from the Keynesian assumptions of GATT: that there are no
special rights, no special protections needed for development. The
only route to development is one that involves radical trade (and
investment) liberalization.
Fate of the Special Measures for Developing Countries
Perhaps the best indicators of the marginal consideration given to
developing countries in the WTO is the fate of the measures that
were supposed to respond to the special conditions of developing
countries. There were three key agreements which promoters of
the WTO claimed were specifically designed to meet the needs of
the South:
* The Special Ministerial Agreement approved in Marrakesh in April 1994,
which decreed that special compensatory measures would be taken to
counteract the negative effects of trade liberalization on the net
food-importing developing countries;
* The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which mandated thart
the system of quotas on developing country exports of textiles and
garments to the North would be dismantled over ten years;
* The Agreement on Agriculture, which, while "imperfect,"
nevertheless was said to promise greater market access to
developing country agricultural products and begin the process of
bringing down the high levels of state support and subsidization of
EU and US agriculture, which was resulting in the dumping of
massive quantities of grain on Third World markets.
What happened to these measures?
The Special Ministerial Decision taken at Marrakesh to provide
assistance to "Net Food Importing Countries" to offset the
reduction of subsidies that would make food imports more
expensive for the "Net Food Importing Countries" has never been
implemented. Though world crude prices more than doubled in
1995/96, the World Bank and the IMF scotched an idea of any
offsetting aid by arguing that "the price increase was not due to the
Agreement on Agriculture, and besides there was never any
agreement anyway on who would be responsible for providing the
assistance."(13)
The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing committed the developed
countries to bring under WTO discipline all textile and garment
imports over four stages, ending on January 1, 2005. A key feature
was supposed to be the lifting of quotas on imports restricted under
the Multifiber Agreement (MFA) and similar schemes which had
been used to contain penetration of developed country markets by
cheap clothing and textile imports from the Third World. Developed
countries retained, however, the right to choose which product
lines to liberalize when, so that they first brought mainly
unrestricted products into the WTO discipline and postponed
dealing with restricted products till much later. Thus, in the first
phase, all restricted products continued to be under quota, as only
items where imports were not considering threatening-like felt hats
or yarn of carded fine animal hair--were included in the developed
countries' notifications. Indeed, the notifications for the coverage of
products for liberalization on January 1, 1998 showed that "even at
the second stage of implementation only a very small proportion" of
restricted products would see their quotas lifted.(14)
Given this trend, John Whalley notes that "the belief is now widely
held in the developing workd that in 2004, whilme the MFA may
disappear, it may well be replaced by a series of other trade
instruments, possibly substantial increases in anti-dumping
duties." (15)
When it comes to the Agreement on Agriculture, which was sold to
developing countries during the Uruguay Round as a major step
toward providing market access to developing country imports and
bringing down the high levels of domestic support for first world
farming interests that results in dumping of commodities in third
world markets, little gains in market access after five years into
developed country markets have been accompanied by even higher
levels of overall subsidization-through ingenious combinations of
export subsidies, export credits, market support, and various kinds
of direct income payments.
The figures speak for themselves: the level of overall subsidization
of agriculture in the OECD countries rose from $182 billion in 1995
when the WTO was born to $280 billion in 1997 to $362 billion in
1998! Instead of the beginning of a New Deal, the AOA, in the
words of a former Philippine Secretary of Trade, "has perpetuated
the unevenness of a playing field which the multilateral trading
system has been trying to correct. Moreover, this has placed the
burden of adjustment on developing countries relative to countries
who can afford to maintain high levels of domestic support and
export subsidies."(16)
The collapse of the agricultural negotiations in Seattle is the best
example of how extremely difficult it is to reform the AOA. The
European Union opposed till the bitter end language in an
agreement that would commit it to "significant reduction" of its
subsidies. But the US was not blameless. It resolutely opposed
any effort to cut back on its forms of subsidies such as export
credits, direct income for farmers, and "emergency" farm aid, as
well as any mention of its practice of dumping products in
developing country markets.
Oligarchic Decision-Making as a Central, Defining Process
Is the system of WTO decisionmaking reformable?
While far more flexible than the WTO, the GATT was, of course, far
from perfect, and one of the bad traits that the WTO took over from
it was the system of decision-making. GATT functioned through a
process called "consensus." Now consensus responded to the
same problem that faced the IMF and the World Bank's developed
country members: how to assure control at a time that the
numbers gave the edge to the new countries of the South. In the
Fund and the Bank, the system of decision-making evolved had the
weight of a country's vote determined by the size of its capital
subscriptions, which gave the US and the other rich countries
effective control of the two organizations.
In the GATT, a one-country one-vote system was initially tried, but
the big trading powers saw this as inimical to their interests. Thus,
the last time a vote was taken in GATT was in 1959.(17) The
system that finally emerged was described by US economist
Bergsten as one that "does not work by voting. It works by a
consensus arrangement which, to tell the truth, is managed by four-
the Quads: the United States, Japan, European Union, and
Canada."(18) He continued: "Those countries have to agree if any
major steps are going to be made, that is true. But no votes.(19)
Indeed, so undemocratic is the WTO that decisions are arrived at
informally, via caucuses convoked in the corridors of the
ministerials by the big trading powers. The formal plenary
sessions, which in democracies are the central arena for decision-
making, are reserved for speeches. The key agreements to come
out of the first and second ministerials of the WTO-the decision to
liberalize information technology trade taken at the first ministerial
in Singapore in 1996 and the agreement to liberalize trade in
electronic commerce arrived at in Geneva in 1998-were all decided
in informal backroom sessions and simply presented to the full
assembly as faits accompli. Consensus simply functioned to
render non-transparent a process where smaller, weaker countries
were pressured, browbeaten, or bullied to conform to the
"consensus" forged among major trading powers.
With surprising frankness, at a press conference in Seattle, US
Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, who played the pivotal
role in all three ministerials, described the dynamics and
consequences of this system of decision-making:
The process, including even at Singapore as recently as three
years ago, was a rather exclusionary one. All meetings were held
between 20 and 30 keycountries...And that meant 100 countries,
100, were never in the room...[T]his led to an extraordinarily bad
feeling that they were left our of the process and that the results
even at Singapore had been dictated to them by the 25 or 30
privileged countries who were in the room.(20)
Then, after registering her frustration at the WTO delegates' failing
to arrive at consensus via supposedly broader "working groups" set
up for the Seattle ministerial, Barshefsky warned delegates: "...[I]
have made very clear and I reiterated to all ministers today that, if
we are unable to achieve that goal, I fully reserve the right to also
use a more exclusive process to achieve a final outcome. There is
no question about either my right as the chair to do it or my
intention as the chair to do it...."(21)
And she was serious about ramming through a declaration at the
expense of non-representativeness, with India, one of the key
developing country members of the WTO, being "routinely excluded
from private talks organized by the United States in last ditch
efforts to come up with a face-saving deal."(22)
In damage-containment mode after the collapse of the Seattle
Ministerial, Barshefsky, WTO Director General Mike Moore, and
other rich country representatives have spoken about the need for
WTO "reform." But none have declared any intention of pushing for
a one-county/one-vote majority decision-making system or a voting
system weighted by population size, which would be the only fair
and legitimate methods in a democratic international organization.
The fact is, such mechanisms will never be adopted, for this would
put the developing countries in a preponderant role in terms of
decision-making.
Should One Try to Reform a Jurassic Institution?
Reform is a viable strategy when the system is question is
fundamentally fair but has simply been corrupted such as the case
with some democracies. It is not a viable strategy when a system
is so fundamentally unequal in purposes, principles, and processes
as the WTO. The WTO systematically protects and the trade and
economic advantages of the rich countries, particularly the United
States. It is based on a paradigm or philosophy that denigrates
the right to take actvist measures to achieve development on the
part of less developed countries, thus leading to a radical dilution
of their right to "special and differntial treatment." The WTO raises
inequality into a principle of decisionmaking.
The WTO is often promoted as a "rules-based" trading framework
that protects the weaker and poorer countries from unilateral
actions by the stronger states. The opposite is true: the WTO,
like many other multilateral international agreements, is meant to
instututionalize and legtimize inequality. Its main purpose is to
reduce the tremendous policing costs to the stronger powers that
would be involved in disciplining many small countries in a more
fluid, less structured international system.
It is not surprising that both the WTO and the IMF are currently
mired in a severe crisis of legitimacy. For both are highly
centralized, highly unaccountable, highly non-transparent global
institutions that seek to subjugate, control, or harness vast
swathes of global economic, social, political, and environmental
processes to the needs and interests of a global minority of states,
elites, and TNCs. The dynamics of such institutions clash with
the burgeoning democratic aspirations of peoples, countries, and
communities in both the North and the South. The centralizing
dynamics of these institutions clash with the efforts of communities
and nations to regain control of their fate and achieve a modicum of
security by deconcentrating and decentralizing economic and
political power. In other words, these are Jurassic institutions in an
age of participatory political and economic democracy.
Building a More Pluralistic System of International Trade
Governance
If there is one thing that is clear, it is that developing country
governments and international civil society must not allow their
energies to be hijacked into reforming these institutions. This will
only amount to administering a facelift to fundamentally flawed
institutions. Indeed, today's need is not another centralized global
institution, reformed or unreformed, but the deconcentration and
decentralization of institutional power and the creation of a
pluralistic system of institutions and organizations interacting with
one another amidst broadly defined and flexible agreements and
understandings.
It was under such a more pluralistic global system, where
hegemonic power was still far form institutionalized in a set of all
encompassing and powerful multilateral organizations that the
Latin American countries and many Asian countries were able to
achieve a modicum of industrial development in the period from
1950-70. It was under a more pluralistic world system, under a
GATT that was limited in its power, flexible, and more sympathetic
to the special status of developing countries, that the East and
Southeast Asian countries were able to become newly
industrializing countries through activist state trade and industrial
policies that departed significantly from the free-market biases
enshrined in the WTO.
The alternative to a powerful WTO is not a Hobbesian state of
nature. It is always the powerful that have stoked this fear. The
reality of international economic relations in a world marked by a
multiplicity of international and regional institutions that check one
another is a far cry from the propaganda image of a "nasty" and
"brutish" world. Of course, the threat of unilateral action by the
powerful is ever present in such a system, but it is one that even
the powerful hesitate to take for fear of its consequences on their
legitimacy as well as the reaction it would provoke in the form of
opposing coalitions.
In other words, what developing countries and international civil
society should aim at is not to reform the WTO but, through a
combination of passive and active measures, to radically reduce its
power and to make it simply another international insitution
coexisting with and being checked by other international
organizations, agreements, and regional groupings. These would
include such diverse actors and institutions as UNCTAD,
multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labor
Organization (ILO), evolving trde blocs such as Mercosur in Latin
America, SAARC in South Asia, SADCC in Southern Africa, and
ASEAN in Southeast Asia. It is in such a more fluid, less
structured, more pluralistic world with multiple checks and
balances that the nations and communities of the South will be
able to carve out the space to develop based on their values, their
rhythms, and the strategies of their choice.
*Walden Bello, PhD, is executive director of Focus on the Global
South and professor of sociology and public administratioon at the
University of the Philippines. He attended all three WTO
Ministerials as an NGO delegate. He is the author of several works
on the WTO including Iron Cage: The WTO, the Bretton Woods
Institutions, and the Third World (Bangkok: Focus on the Global
South, 1999).
1. Press briefing, Seattle, 2 December 1999.
2. Quoted in "Deadline Set for WTO Reforms," Guardian News
Service, Jan. 10, 2000.
3. Figures from World Trade Organization, Annual Report 1998:
International Trade Statistics (Geneva: WTO, 1998), p. 12.
4. Quoted in "Cakes and Caviar: The Dunkel Draft and Third World
Agriculture," Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec. 1993), p. 220.
5. C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Institute for International Economics,
Testimony before US Senate, Washington, DC, Oct. 13, 1994.
6. UNCTAD, Trade and Development Report 1991 (New York:
United Nations, 1991), p. 191.
7. See discussion of this in Walden Bello and Stephanie
Rosenfeld, Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis
(San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1990),
p. 161.
8. Quoted in John Whaley, "Special and Differential Treatment in
the Millenium Round," CSGR Working Paper, No. 30/99 (May
1999), p 3.
9. Ibid., p. 4.
10. Ibid., p. 7.
11. Ibid., p. 10.
12. Ibid., p. 14.
13. "More Power to the World Trade Organization?", Panos
Briefing, Nov. 1999, p. 14.
14. South Center, The Multilateral Trade Agenda and the South
(Geneva: South Center, 1998), p. 32.
15. John Whalley, Building Poor Countries' Trading Capacity CSGR
Working Paper Series (Warwick: CSGR, March 1999)
16. Secretary of Trade Cesar Bautista, Address to 2nd WTO
Ministerial, Geneva, May 18, 1998.
17. C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Institute for International
Economics, Terstimony before the US Senate, Washington, DC,
Oct. 13, 1994.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Press briefing, Seattle, Washington, Dec. 2, 1999
21. Ibid.
22. "Deadline Set for WTO Reforms," Guardian News Service, Jan.
10, 2000
******************************************************************************
Focus on the Global South (FOCUS)
c/o CUSRI, Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330 THAILAND
Tel: 662 218 7363/7364/7365/7383
Fax: 662 255 9976
E-mail: N.Bullard at focusweb.org
Web Page http://www.focusweb.org
Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst at foodfirst.org.
_____________________________________________________________
Check out the new and improved Topica site!
http://www.topica.com/t/13
More information about the Asia-apec
mailing list