Since its creation, the WTO has harmed the world’s poor. It has forced developing countries to open their markets to heavily subsidized imports, undermining local food production and industry. Policies to develop domestic production and industries are penalised, locking them into raw material extraction and commodity dependence. It has concentrated wealth and power in rich countries and their corporations.
Today, the WTO is collapsing under its own contradictions. Developed countries dodge WTO rules, push bilateral and plurilateral deals to force deeper liberalisation on developing nations, and impose unilateral sanctions and tariffs with impunity, while the weakened Appellate Body leaves the Global South unable to fight back.
At the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference in Yaoundé, hegemonic powers present themselves as rescuers of a system whose crisis they helped create. The US and EU, backed by WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, are pushing to replace consensus decision-making with exclusive clubs.
While their undemocratic methods and strong-arming tactics have long broken the illusion of international cooperation, the US and EU-engineered coup will allow the full takeover of the WTO agenda-setting by developed countries and their corporations. It will worsen unequal treatment of members as well as weaken any special support for poorer countries. It will sideline developing countries, deepen existing power imbalances, and give wealthy nations more room to exert control and domination. The development goals and priorities of developing countries will be pushed aside for self-serving “new issues” promoted by more powerful members.
Indeed, development-focused priorities have long been pushed off the WTO agenda. In agriculture, developing countries are denied policy tools such as subsidies, public stockholding, and safeguard measures to support their farmers and ensure food security. Small scale fisherfolks from least developed and developing countries are refused the much needed help to pursue their livelihoods while industrial fleets of developed countries continue to deplete fish stocks without accountability. These failures will further damage food systems and worsen food insecurity.
Meanwhile, developed countries and their Big Tech firms are demanding the permanent moratorium on e-commerce custom duties and expansion of its coverage. The e-commerce moratorium has already caused significant tariff revenue losses for developing countries, estimated by UNCTAD to be USD 56 billion between 2007 and 2020. Making the moratorium permanent would lock in these losses and limit their ability to regulate digital imports as the digital economy grows.
The crisis of the WTO is not just a moment for the minority elite to reorganise and consolidate power but also an opportunity for peoples’ movements worldwide. Now is the time to demand real system change and a trade system that serves the democratic majority.
We call for the end of the WTO! Let us unite and fight for a new and just trade framework, one that guarantees genuine economic cooperation and solidarity, enables economic diversification, defends peoples’ rights and development, ensures food sovereignty, and advances trade and climate justice.
The future of equitable global trade depends on the peoples’ collective action. ###
Reference
Ivan Enrile
ienrile@iboninternational.org
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