Special WTO Issue: Trading It All Away

Welcome to Seattle: Ministerial Meeting Debates the World Trade Organization's Agenda for the 21st Century

by Robert Weissman

Mike Moore, the new director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), feels besieged and defensive. With the WTO's Third Ministerial Conference set for Seattle from November 29 to December 3, he is witnessing highly contentious negotiations among the WTO members over the Seattle agenda -- a conflict which threatens to throw a wrench in plans to launch a Seattle Round (also called a Millennium Round) of negotiations to expand the WTO's power and authority. And he is fearful of the large-scale protests expected in Seattle, and their potential to shape public and media conceptions of the trade debate. MORE >>

Trading Away the Environment: WTO Rules Thwart Environmental Agreements, Punish Innovation

by Michelle Sforza

Five years of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have convinced environmentalists that their worst fears were right: the global commerce agency is fundamentally flawed, its basic rules antithetical to environmental, as well as consumer, worker safety and other non-commercial interests.

In the WTO's very first ruling on one country's challenge to another's law, a tribunal ordered the United States to scrap a U.S. Clean Air Act regulation or face economic sanctions simply because the regulation might adversely impact foreign gasoline. Under WTO rules, countries which lose a tribunal decision must alter their laws to comply with the WTO agreements or accept perpetual trade sanctions or fines. In the Clean Air Act case, the Clinton administration moved to change the offending regulation. MORE >>

Trading Away Forests: Emerging and Current WTO Threats to Forest Protection

by Rory Cox, Paige Fischer and Victor Menotti

In a plan that could turn out to be destructive for the world's remaining forests, the United States and industry groups are pushing hard for adoption of a global agreement for free trade in forest products. The proposal for an "Advanced Tariff Liberalization" agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) would eliminate tariffs worldwide on raw logs and wood and paper products and could open the door to negotiations of regulatory barriers to trade, including some environmental safeguards. MORE >>

Trading Away Public Health: WTO Obstacles to Effective Toxics Controls

by Patti Goldman and J. Martin Wagner

The WTO has initiated a major expansion of trade rules into the realm of public health protection -- a matter traditionally within the purview of national and local governments. The new WTO rules collide with many public health and environmental protections and dictate the extent to which a country or state may ban or restrict the use of toxic chemicals to protect public health. MORE >>

The WTO's Slow Motion Coup Against Democracy

An Interview with Lori Wallach

Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Dubbed "the trade debate's guerrilla warrior" by the National Journal, Wallach is a leader in the worldwide movement for fair trade and investment policy. She is co-author of Whose Trade Organization?: Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy. Her other publications include numerous trade analyses and reports, and chapters in several anthologies. Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign and a founding board member of the International Forum on Globalization. MORE >>