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  Defining 'Success' at the 5th WTO Ministerial in CancunThere has been little advance coverage of the World Trade Organization ministerial beginning this week in Cancun by the U.S. press, but elsewhere the WTO's 5th Ministerial is a big story: the deep divide among WTO nations about the WTO's future is poised to crack open in public view. At stake in Cancun is nothing less than the future of the WTO and the version of corporate globalization it implements worldwide. The limited U.S. coverage has focused on the "horse race" - which country is seeking what concession - or on broad accounts that only a few big fights exist between two competing "sides." Yet underlying what even the WTO's supporters admit is a massive logjam on nearly every issue that was supposed to be decided at Cancun, are deep ideological divides. "Success" at Cancun depends on which side of the chasm one stands. Given the most powerful countries at the WTO - in cahoots with the supposedly neutral WTO Secretariat - have set the meeting's agenda to suit their goals, there is no good outcome. The best result is what the U.S. press may report as a "failure" - the small bloc of powerful nations fail to steamroll the majority of the WTO's members, who are developing countries, and thus the summit ends in deadlock. Under the current agenda, for the developing countries to obtain their goals - such as ending dumping of subsidized food on their local markets which has increased during the WTO's reign, destroying local farmers and undermining food security - they must first agree to establish new WTO agreements on a range of new issues that would eviscerate poor countries' ability to develop. What's the underlying divide? The U.S., EU, Japan and a handful of other developed countries want the WTO to be "the constitution for a single global economy," a description that the first WTO Director General Renato Ruggiero infamously uttered in a moment of unguarded candor. They want the WTO to enforce one-size-fits-all rules on an array of issues ranging far beyond trade which all WTO countries must adopt as their domestic policies. These broad WTO rules implement worldwide much of what has become known as the "Washington Consensus." While this agenda has proven to be a devastating failure, its agenda of eliminating a role for government and public interest regulation of the market, establishing new property rights and protections for corporations, and commodifying into new tradable units public services, genetic materials and common resources such as water, is at the heart of the WTO which currently enforces 18 expansive agreements implementing this version of corporate-led globalization. Yet from the perspective of the world's largest corporations and their client governments, this is only the start. The EU, U.S., Japan and company are pushing for decisions in Cancun to add to the WTO extreme terms now uniquely contained in the NAFTA. These "new issues" include expansive new investor rights, rules on government procurement eliminating local or environmental preferences and new rights for foreign service corporations to turn government services into their for-profit operations. Meanwhile, an increasingly consolidated bloc of developing nations has a totally different view. These nations want the WTO to just deal with trade - and to do so in a way that benefits all of the WTO nations. While different developing nations have different ideas of what comprises fair trade rules, they are united in opposing any expansion of the WTO into the new issues. When the 1994 Uruguay Round created the WTO, developing countries were promised major gains as industrialized countries lowered and eventually eliminated tariffs on items like textiles and apparel, and cut agriculture subsidies that have enabled huge agribusinesses to dominate world markets. Editorial boards and opinion-shapers largely endorsed the idea and promoted it. The WTO was going to be good for development. After nearly nine years, the promised economic benefits for developing countries have not materialized, and for many, poverty has worsened. The number of people living on $1 a day (the World Bank's line of extreme poverty) has risen since the WTO went into effect, growth rates have slowed and the Least Developed Countries’ share of world trade has dropped. (For more on the results of the WTO, check out Public Citizen's forthcoming new book from The New Press, Whose Trade Organization: The Comprehensive Guide to the WTO.) Thus, before the last WTO Ministerial in Doha, more than 90 developing countries filed an official WTO paper listing 105 changes -- called the "Implementation Agenda" - to existing WTO rules essential to making the WTO work for them. The demands included extending deadlines for changing domestic development, investment, patent and other policies and balancing trade terms. Yet only four of these changes were addressed in the Doha Ministerial Declaration, which the WTO Secretariat dubbed the "Doha Development Agenda," and the developing countries called the "Everything but Development" Agenda. Going into Cancun, developing countries are united in sticking to their Implementation Agenda. Despite this, the EU, with the U.S., Japan and WTO officials, remain strongly committed to launching talks to expand WTO to the "New issues" that have less to do with trade and more to do with dictating countries' domestic policies and priorities. Most of civil society - including the Our World Is Not for Sale network, a worldwide network of peoples’ movements and NGOs - call for the WTO to "Shrink or Sink," which is to say for the current global rules to be transformed in large part by eliminating the many invasive constraints on domestic policy and policy-making contained in the WTO rules. This is not a call for no trade rules, but rather a call for no WTO as we know it, no global commerce agency of any name with expansive one-size fits-all rules, and instead a set of trade terms that focus on trade and on making it beneficial to most people. Last week, South African President Thabo Mbeki called for the developing countries to work together with civil society on the battle over the WTO's future. Why do most Americans have no idea that this battle royal is underway? Following the 4th World Trade Organization Ministerial in Doha, Qatar, WTO promoters gushed over a renewed consensus on "free trade," chalking-up the 1999 Seattle summit as an otherwise freak occurrence. In remote Qatar where demonstrations were banned - and with the cloud of September 11 lurking over the November 2001 summit where the U.S. played on emotions and political vulnerabilities among developing countries eager not to join President Bush's axis of evil list - U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and then-WTO Secretariat Mike Moore used extraordinarily harsh tactics to force WTO signatory nations to paper over profound differences and sign a Doha Ministerial Declaration. It was immediately touted as wiping clean "the stain of Seattle," as Zoellick called it. "Mike Moore…called the six-day meeting historic," wrote the Financial Times. "His call was echoed by Pascal Lamy… ‘This has been a hell of a good week for the WTO,’ he said. The WTO is back on track and the train has left the station.’” However, back in Geneva the real headaches began. Reality, in the form of the fine print of the Doha Declaration, caught up quickly as it became evident that the papered-over divide was only growing wider, in part thanks to the resentments of the harsh tactics employed in Doha. Given the deep philosophical chasm, it is not surprising that trade negotiators of the 146-nation WTO have missed all of the deadlines set in Doha for "deliverables" in Cancun, including on agriculture (the backbone of nearly two-thirds of WTO nations' economies), trade in non-agricultural goods, intellectual property and access to essential medicines. The response from the WTO Secretariat has been to again ride roughshod over reality, ship a draft Ministerial text to Cancun which has not been approved by WTO member countries to serve as the basis for the negotiations there and try to roll back expectations. This has caused yet greater anger and divisiveness. Given this reality, the WTO spin machine is at it again - this time working overtime to lower expectations about the Cancun Ministerial to a subterranean level - a distant cry from the Doha exuberance. In Cancun, look for WTO boosters to announce that a "framework" for a new "round" of WTO talks has been agreed in Cancun. Yet, such a framework was already agreed in Doha and at Cancun, specific agreements to implement this framework were slated. If the developing countries withstand the outrageous tactics they have faced in the past, what will be agreed in Cancun is nothing. Given the alternative "launching new issues" that's a fine outcome. However, a continued deadlock will do nothing to deal with the severe damage the existing WTO rules are causing -including creating increased hunger thanks to the WTO's current agriculture rules which actually facilitate food dumping. To deal with these issues will require a major shift in the powerful WTO countries' agenda. And how will you know if Cancun ends in a deadlock? A careful consumer of the U.S. press may remain unaware absent sources such as Tom Paine or a scan of the Indian, Brazilian or Jamaican press, because the major powers will attempt to spin any outcome short of a walk-out, fist-fight implosion in some positive way to bring the agenda back to Geneva where the pressure tactics on the developing country WTO countries can resume, but to what end? Will the developing countries bend against their interests or will the WTO snap? The crisis of legitimacy that hovers over the WTO in Cancun may not be in headlines yet, but it is on the minds of even the WTO's greatest defenders. Consider USTR Zoellick's opening thought at a Washington, D.C. news conference last week: "Unfortunately, there's no avoiding Cancun." more resources
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