Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the
World Trade Organization

by Juliette Beck and Kevin Danaher in Globalize This,
eds. K. Danaher and R. Burbach(Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press, 2001)

1. The WTO advances corporate-managed trade at all costs.
The WTO is not a democratic institution, yet its policies
impact all aspects of society and the planet. WTO rules are
essentially written by corporations who have inside access
to the negotiations.

2. The WTO is a stacked, secretive court. The WTO's dispute
panels rule on whether or not a nation's laws are "barriers to
trade" behind closed doors with no public input allowed. The
panels are comprised of three trade bureaucrats who are not
screened for conflict of interest.

3. The WTO tramples over labor and human rights.
WTO agreements forbid the regulation of a product based on
the way it is produced, regardless if the product was made with
child labor or by workers exposed to toxic chemicals. A
Government Accounting Office study found that the U.S. law banning
products made with forced labor violates WTO rules.

4. WTO policies are widening the gap between the rich and
poor. The UN Development Program's Human Development Report
for 1999 states: "The top fifth of the world's people in the richest
countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of
foreign direct investment, while the bottom fifth get barely more
than 1 percent. These trends reinforce economic stagnation and
low human development."

5. The WTO is anti-environment. The WTO is being used by
corporations to dismantle hard
won environmental protections. In 1993, the very first WTO
panel ruled against a regulation of the U.S. Clean Air Act, which had
required both domestic and foreign producers alike to produce
cleaner gasoline.

6. The WTO rules undermine public health. The WTO's fierce
defense of intellectual property rights (patents, copyrights and
trademarks) comes at the expense of health and human lives.
The WTO's support of pharmaceutical companies against
governments seeking to protect people's health has serious
implications for places like sub-Saharan Africa, where
80 percent of the world's new AIDS cases are found.

7. The WTO was undemocratically established. During the U.S.
Congressional debate in 1994, Public Citizen offered a $10,000
donation to the charity of choice of any Congressperson who
had read the entire GATT/WTO legislation. Colorado Republican
Hank Brown accepted the challenge. Although he originally
planned to vote in favor of GATT, after reading the text, he was
appalled and could not support it. The WTO implementing legislation|
made many changes to U.S. laws that most lawmakers were unaware of.


8. The WTO is undemocratic and unaccountable. The WTO claims
that it operates by consensus, but the Seattle
debacle illustrates how the WTO really functions. After much of
the ministerial declaration was drafted in private "green room"
meetings with select countries present, African and Caribbean
countries effectively banded together for the first time. They
denounced the closed-door process and blocked the launching of a
new round.

9. The WTO hurts countries in the Global South. Leaders of the
global South are developing a new consensus
that free trade policies result in great wealth for a few, and
impoverishment of the many. Under WTO rules, developing
countries are prohibited from following the same polices that
industrialized countries pursued, such as protecting young, domestic
industries until they can be internationally competitive.

10. The tide is turning against free trade and the WTO!
There is a growing international backlash against the WTO
and the corporate globalization over which it presides.
Movement-building by coalitions such as People's Global Action, the
Direct Action Network, the Citizen's Trade Campaign, the Fifty
Years Is Enough Network, and the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs
& the Environment are growing fast, as public support for a
corporate-managed global economy dwindles.