WTO Overview:

The WTO (World Trade Organization): Trading Away Democracy

The WTO was quietly enacted by politico-economic elites in 1993, with the signing of the GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade) and is being used to circumvent the sovereignty of nation-states in favor of transnational corporations.

The globalization process through the WTO and the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is presented by the corporate press as a benign and natural historical development that supposedly has taken us from regional to national and now international market relations.

The reality is very different: it is now clear that the WTO has elevated corporate power above the sovereign powers of all nation states. The WTO has panels composed of non-elected trade specialists who act as judges over economic issues, placing them beyond the reach of national sovereignty and popular control, thereby ensuring that community interests will be subordinated to finance capital. There is no public input, no conflict of interest provisions and the decision making is in secret. After a ruling the WTO can force a national law to be changed either by raising retaliatory tariffs or by demanding cash compensation equal to the value of the lost trade.

In 100 cases, over the first four years at the WTO, all decisions by non-elected corporate panels have favored corporations over labor, corporations over public health and corporations over the environment. Here are some examples of such rulings that have rarely been reported in the mainstream media:
 

Corporations favored over labor

A non-elected WTO panel in January, 1999, ruled that the European Union could no longer give preferential treatment to banana imports from the Caribbean. The European Union, for 20 years, has had an agreement with impoverished former colonies in the Caribbean to buy two thirds of the EU banana imports. The loss of the banana trade with the EU will have devastating consequences for thousands of people across the Caribbean who depend solely on this industry. Mass poverty, high unemployment and instability in the region are inevitable due to this WTO ruling. These Caribbean bananas are the remaining 3% of bananas produced worldwide not under the direct corporate control of just three companies: Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte. (Let us not forget that with the signing of NAFTA Mexican tariffs on U.S. corn were lowered drastically and as a result two million Mexican farmers have been forced to leave their land. Under NAFTA, agricultural conglomerates have had a huge increase in profits resulting from this decimation of the Mexican corn market and now the WTO is following the same path of wrecking the economy of an already impoverished people.)

The State of Massachusetts passed sanctions against the undemocratic government of Burma. The European Union (representing certain corporations) filed at the WTO in 1997 against this Massachusetts law and most observers believe the EU will win because sanction laws are prohibited under the WTO. This would be an astounding historical reversal of democratic rights: nine years ago the ruthless apartheid government of South Africa was overturned as the result of international sanctions that were demanded the U.S. African-American community, labor and grassroots leadership. If the WTO was in effect then, Nelson Mandela would still be in prison.
 

Corporations favored over public health

In 1989 the European Union banned the use of synthetic hormones, effectively excluding U.S. hormone-treated beef from Europe. In 1996 the European Parliament voted an astonishing 366-0 in favor of reauthorizing the ban, formally backing their citizens and scientistsâ belief that hormones used in meat production increase cancer rates. In 1998 a non-elected WTO panel ruled that the EU must allow U.S. hormone treated beef into the EU. This clearly democratic process by the European Parliament was overturned by the WTO ruling jeopardizing the right of nations to limit the risks to which their citizens will be exposed.
 

Corporations favored over the environment

Sea turtles, are severely endangered. They have swum the worldâs oceans for over 150 million years but now all species are teetering on the brink of extinction. Prior to 1989, 150,000 sea turtles were drown in shrimp nets worldwide every year. From 1989 to 1998, under a provision of the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. was able to protect sea turtles by banning shrimp caught without turtle safe methods. This ban cut the drowning of sea turtles in shrimp nets down to about 2,000 annually. In 1998 a non-elected WTO panel ruled against this U.S. ban. This WTO ruling was a precedent that will now virtually wipe out the use of environmental safeguards in trade at the WTO. Every nation has the responsibility to be concerned about the global commons, such as the oceans. Bans on imports that do not use environmentally safe methods has been an effective recourse to prevent environmental devastation due to the corporate drive for profit.
 

The WTO speaks only for corporations and has become a global coup against democracy. It is the dismantling of democracy disguised as a trade pact.

• Come to Seattle at the end of November, 1999 and let the WTO (World Trade Organization) leadership know that corporations can't trample the rights of governments and citizens to protect our communities, jobs and endangered species; or to control our food or our right to use governmental sanctions. In the last four years the WTO has gutted national protective laws, shredding our U.S. constitution and the complicit corporate press has been silent. Workers from South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, and from around the world will be here to raise our voices for labor, the environment, and for all people.
  
  
• WTO Links
• Books and tapes

Join people from around the world to educate, strategize and protest how the WTO's structure and decision-making threatens us all.

What you can do:

Model Resolution Opposing the WTO: Pass a resolution in your organization and send a copy to elected officials. (You can use this model or write your own.) Contact your Elected Officials