Cleaning house at the WTO

[CHIMO]

This week, the 10th anniversary of the infamous "Battle in Seattle," ministers assembled in Geneva with renewed hopes of reviving world trade talks. To dampen expectations, World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy bills the event as a mere "housekeeping session," rather than full-fledged negotiations.

There is no question the WTO needs to clean house. The organisation charged with developing a fair and legitimate multilateral trading system has been left in the dust of world economic events.

A global financial crisis brought on by weak regulation of financial markets has driven the world economy into deep recession, and the WTO prattles on about further deregulation of financial services.

Similar deregulation spilled into commodity speculation, causing a food crisis, and the WTO continues to push for accelerated liberalisation of developing country agricultural markets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/01/wto-dohatradetalks

[IrateCitizen]

1. The WTO is, like, so 1999

It really doesn't matter much what they want to do, because the West is no longer in the drivers' seat in these negotiations. They can no longer force open markets in LDCs (Less Developed Countries) while simultaneously forcing them to adopt strict standards in intellectual property rights to protect key Western industries, as well as refusing to budge on Western agricultural subsidies.

The shocks to the global financial system have caused international trade to decline considerably. Does the WTO really expect this trend to reverse itself as other shoes drop? Either way, they're largely becoming irrelevant.

[Overseas]

2. The WTO is pushing other countries to buy Derivatives

I didn't realize how much of a key player the WTO had been in pushing for banking deregulation.

If Ecuador wants the USA to continue buying its bananas (and we're their primary customer) they've got to buy a bunch of our toxic assets or we will put tariffs on their bananas.

Lula's Brazil refused to take such deals at the last WTO round and their economy is thriving comparatively.

Here's a discussion on it with Mike Papantonio and Greg Palast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0z-RrG8xws&feature=related