trade liberalization

[charuX@lucent.com]

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IPI_Marker

One of the topics debated on this forum has been the need for trade
liberalization.
I have held that much of what is being pushed in the name of
liberalization
is a blueprint for transnational capital interests t extend their power
and
profit making with little benefit to the populations over which this
'liberalization'
would be imposed. The attached article presents concrete evidence.

__________________________________________________________________


Trade Piracy Unmasked November 12, 2001 By George Monbiot

Just as woodworkers used to drink in the Carpenter's Arms, or
farmhands in the Jolly Ploughman, the trade negotiators from the
world's richest nations have found their way to their own hallowed
ground.

When they gather in Switzerland, they dine together in an exclusive
restaurant on the shores of Lake Geneva called The Pirate. It's here
that the members of "the quad" -- the US, EU, Canada and Japan --
study their maps and count their doubloons.

In Seattle in 1999, the world trade talks failed because the weaker
countries, excluded from the key negotiations, walked out. Now, we
have been promised, the rich world has learnt from its mistakes.

At the new talks in Qatar on Friday, the nations of "the quad" will,
they insist, rescue the castaways of the new world order. But the
progress so far suggests that, instead of being allowed a share in the
spoils of free trade, the world's poor will be walking the plank.

The draft declaration due to be discussed this weekend was mostly
written during two exclusive meetings: in Mexico in August and in
Singapore last month.

Though the World Trade Organisation has 142 members, only 21 nations,
among them the world's richest and most powerful, were permitted to
attend. The documents the meeting produced were then submitted to the
other members for approval. They were not permitted to make
substantial changes.

As a result, the draft declaration contains almost none of the
concessions that developing countries, representing most of the
world's people, have requested. Powerful nations have refused to stop
subsidising their exports of meat, grain and sugar: by dumping them in
weak countries at artificially low prices, they destroy the
livelihoods of local farmers.

Britain and Germany have insisted that they will not relax the laws
governing the patenting of drugs: poor countries facing public health
disasters will continue to be denied cheap medicine.

The poor world wants the rich world to honour the promises it made
under the last world trade agreement, before starting any new
negotiations. Instead "the quad" is loading the agenda with new and
fiendishly complex issues, such as investment, services and government
procurement.

At first sight this approach makes no sense. Just as Presidents Bush
and Blair insist that the world's future prosperity, democracy and
even freedom from terror will depend on a successful new trade round,
their negotiators appear to be doing everything in their power to
undermine it.

But all that has happened is that the powerful nations have abandoned
the pretence of seeking consent. Now they will simply bludgeon the
developing world into submission.

Last month in Geneva an African delegate to the World Trade
Organisation complained that, "If I speak out too strongly, the US
will phone my minister. They will twist the story and say that I am
embarrassing the United States.

My government will not even ask, 'What did he say?' They will just
send me a ticket tomorrow. ... I fear that bilateral pressure will get
me, so I don't speak, for fear of upsetting the master. To me, that
threat is real.  Because I am from a poor country, I can't say what I
want." If the poor nations complain, the rich nations simply withdraw
aid or freeze their exports.

Now, as Christian Aid has revealed, some governments are dispensing
with negotiations altogether. Britain's Department for International
Development, run by Clare Short, has decided to bypass the World Trade
Organisation and apply direct pressure on poor nations to open up
their markets to foreign companies. The department has told Ghana that
aid money for a water project will be conditional on the country's
privatisation of its water industry.

Without consulting its own people, the government of Ghana has been
forced to start raising the price of water by between two and three
times, to prepare the industry for sale to British, French or US
companies. The corporations will make millions, but already Ghanaians
are being forced to draw their water from polluted rivers and ditches,
infested with cholera and guinea worm, as they can't pay the new
rates.

But while quietly plundering the poorer nations, our pirate states
like to pretend that they are compassionate and even-handed. Britain's
Department of Trade and Industry, as it website boasts, holds regular
meetings with campaign groups such as the World Development Movement,
in order to "share information" and "gather views".

But, as a series of leaked documents shows, behind the scenes the
British government is doing all it can to undermine them.

The papers were discovered by members of the research group Corporate
Europe Observatory, who were investigating a powerful trade
association called International Financial Services, London. The
researchers stumbled upon an unlinked page, accidentally appended to
the lobbyists' website.

International Financial Services, London is one of several British
groups hoping that the trade talks can be expanded to cover a wide
range of service industries. The proposed new General Agreement on
Trade in Services, due to be discussed alongside the other treaties in
Qatar, could oblige countries to privatise key public services such as
health, education and water.

The leaked page contained the minutes of meetings held by the
"Liberalisation of Trade in Services" committee set up to liaise
between IFSL and the British government.

British civil servants, the researchers discovered, were worried that
campaign groups opposed to the General Agreement on Trade in Services
were becoming too effective. The minutes recorded that Matthew Lownds,
from the Foreign Office, "noted that the campaign by the World
Development Movement in particular was leading to a broadening of
concerns. ... He also pointed to the need to coordinate business
responses to the NGO's allegations."  Malcolm McKinnon, a civil
servant from the Department of Trade and Industry, complained that the
case for the general agreement was "vulnerable" when campaigners asked
for "proof of where the economic benefits lay" for poor nations. The
committee decided to spend pounds50-70,000 to "counter the NGOs".

More damagingly, the civil servants appear to have been passing
critical European Union papers to the business people on the
committee, including negotiating documents from other countries, which
could be enormously valuable to companies hoping to anticipate hostile
positions. These papers, the Corporate Europe Observatory points out,
are unavailable even to members of the European Parliament.

So the government, while secretly colluding with corporate lobbyists,
has been double-crossing the public and undermining some of the
poorest countries on earth. Tony Blair and Clare Short call this
process "development".  It is not development. It's piracy.

This article first appeared on znet [http://www.zmag.org/]




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