The failure of the Doha Round should serve to demystify certain characteristics of the WTO.  One of these is the idea that the WTO as an institution promotes “free trade.”  In reality, the main role of the WTO is to establish mechanisms of control over the world market, through the imposition of rules that make national development policies impossible, in areas such as agriculture and industry.

The Peoples’ Victory at the WTO

Maria Luisa Mendonça

Despite the insistence of some countries on saving the negotiations of the so-called Doha Round at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an agreement was impossible to reach.  The last chance happened on July 24th in Geneva, when the Director-General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, recommended the negotiations to be suspended.  The Minister of Industry of the Indian government, Kamal Nath, was more emphatic, upon declaring that the Doha Round was now “somewhere between intensive care and the morgue.” 

The current phase of negotiations began in 2001, in the city of Doha, Qatar, and should have concluded in 2004.  But, even before this period, the WTO had already been suffering from a practically chronic lack of legitimacy.  The same type of impasse had been occurring since the failure of the Millennium Round, marked by huge protests in Seattle (USA), in November of 1999.

After Seattle, it was difficult for the WTO to find a ‘safe’ venue to host their reunions, facing large mobilizations from civil society each time.  For this reason, the ministerial reunion of 2001 took place in Qatar, a small country in the Persian Gulf, where protestors could be easily repressed.

In 2003, conservative sectors considered the ministerial meeting of the WTO in Cancun, México a failure, while social movements considered it a success. The slogan of the movements that organized the protests was “Derail the WTO”— and, it really happened.

In all of the impasses of the WTO, the same motives can be found.  The industrialized countries do not accept fair rules while the countries of the periphery strategically resist certain points of negotiation.  Another fundamental factor is the visibility of movements in opposition to the WTO, that, beyond mobilizations, also produce critical reports about the impacts of trade agreements.

Since the beginning of the Uruguay Round of negotiations in 1995, the WTO has functioned much like a global legislative body, with one objective: to favor large corporations by imposing a series of rules to open markets, in detriment to fundamental rights such as work, health, education, protection of the environment, and food security. 

Many policies proposed within the WTO have been implemented through bilateral or regional commercial agreements and through measures imposed by multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  However, the advancement of the Doha Round could lead to the deepening of policies that make it more difficult for countries to opt for another model of development, based on national interests and on peoples self-determination.  Despite its discourse on “development,” the policies defended within the WTO are based on the deregulation of strategic sectors, which, throughout history, have guaranteed the well-being of society. 

The failure of the Doha Round should serve to demystify certain characteristics of the WTO.  One of these is the idea that the WTO as an institution promotes “free trade.”  In reality, the main role of the WTO is to establish mechanisms of control over the world market, through the imposition of rules that make national development policies impossible, in areas such as agriculture and industry. 

Another myth is the supposed multilateral nature of the WTO.  Facing the recent suspension of Doha Round negotiations, the Director-General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, affirmed that “we lost a very important opportunity to show that multilateralism works.” 

In practice, few of the 149 member countries of the WTO participate effectively in the negotiations.  The majority of governments lack the conditions to maintain representatives in Geneva, where the headquarters of the WTO is located.  What’s more, additional means of exclusion exist, such as the creation of a group of “most interested” countries, or G6, which holds closed-door meetings in order to impose their positions.  This group is formed by the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, and India. 

Under the slogan of “free trade,” the WTO seeks to interfere in many sectors, in addition to commercial policies.  Their agreements include the imposition of patent laws or “intellectual property” which, among other things, impedes access to medicines for the poorest, and favors the control of seeds and biotechnology by large corporations.  The agreements on “services” defended within the WTO seek to privatize basic rights such as health, education, and social security, as well as promoting the monopoly privatization of strategic sectors such as transportation, postal service, water, energy, and telecommunications.  

The debate within the WTO about tariff reduction of non-agricultural products excludes an important factor.  In reality, for many non-industrialized countries, import tariffs mean significant sources of income, since they function as taxes on the profits made by foreign businesses in their markets.  Many times, these tariffs represent the largest source of investment countries can make in infrastructure and essential services.  In relation to countries that are characterized as “emerging,” or that have some significant industrial structure, the proposal of tariff reduction within the WTO could mean the impossibility of countries continuing to employ development strategies in these sectors.

Despite the constant circulation of diverse “myths,” the WTO continues to face a grave crisis of credibility.  In the end, there are only two possibilities for governments to reach an agreement: (1) if the countries of the “center,” such as the United States and the European Union, abstain from protectionist measures for their industries, agriculture, and economies; or (2) if the countries of the “periphery” accept the impositions of the WTO and abdicate from sovereign models of development. 

No one should really believe that the first option would happen.  However, in relation to the second possibility, we hope that the governments of our countries listen to the manifestations of civil society.