Rich countries embraced trade multilateralism when it suited them, and now they’re abandoning it. That may not be such a bad thing.
Good Riddance to the WTO
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WTO
We Need a Progressive Alternative on Trade — and NAFTA 2.0 Isn’t It
Here’s what a progressive trade agenda that actually protects people and planet would actually look like.
How the Battle of Seattle Made the Truth About Globalization True
Twenty years ago, experts refused to see the truth about the dark side of globalization. Then Seattle happened.
Stopping the Biggest Corporate Power Grab in Years
How fighting back against one arcane, Nixon-era trade negotiating procedure could put a stop to a global corporate coup.
South Korea: Ground Zero for Food Sovereignty and Community Resilience
South Korea may be better known for its high-tech exports, but its small farmers are leading the way when it comes to food sovereignty and community agriculture.
TRIPping Up Least Developed Countries on Medicines, Green Tech, and Textbooks?
It is hard to argue that translating an economics book into Swahili for use in Tanzania, making generic AIDS medications for people in Haiti, or adapting climate technologies so they will work in the tropical climate of Laos, are unjust “piracy” efforts to be guarded against.
Food security and the WTO
At a World Social Forum event in 2006, Walden Bello warned that the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was careening down a track to disaster. Civil society needed to insist that negotiators pull back before the Round went off a cliff, the founder of Focus on the Global South said. Although the global economy has certainly changed since then, the WTO seems stuck on the same track.
A Third Way: Globalization from the Bottom
Just as many books have been written as there are individual viewpoints on the crises related to globalization. Mark Engler’s new title How to Rule the World: the Coming Battle Over the Global Economy has some unique offerings. It offers insight about the different currents at play in globalization, along with some new analysis about the rise of a distinct globalization that promotes social and economic democracy. This new movement is people-powered, and its future is promising.
The Dracula Round
Like the good Count of Transylvania, the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations has died more than once. It first collapsed during the WTO ministerial meeting held in Cancun in September 2003. After apparently coming back from the dead, many observers thought it passed away a second time during the so-called Group of Four meeting in Potsdam in June 2007 — only to come back yet again from the dead. Now the question is whether the unraveling of the most recent “mini-ministerial” gathering in Geneva was the silver stake that pierced the trade round’s heart, rendering Doha dead forever.
Derail Doha, Save the Climate
There’s something surreal about the ongoing World Trade Organization talks in Geneva, which aim at coming up with a new agreement to bring down tariffs in order to expand world trade and resuscitate global growth. In the face of the looming specter of climate change, these negotiations amount to arguing over the arrangement of deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking.