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**MARCH 13, 2024**
On the Prospect website
Turning the Tables in Minnesota
An enduring union-community alliance in the Twin Cities may be a
model for progressive victories. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
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Social Distortion
On the fourth anniversary of the pandemic, a look at how America
pulled apart as the rest of the world pulled together BY RICK
PERLSTEIN
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Miscarriage and Murder
The
Alabama legislature has acted to protect doctors and IVF clinic workers
from the 'fetal personhood' doctrine, but not pregnant women. BY
KATHERINE V.W. STONE
Kuttner on TAP
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**** WTO, RIP
The annual World Trade Organization meeting came to an ignominious end
last week with no 'progress' on major issues. That is a form of
progress.
The WTO, dating to 1995, is a dinosaur. It was created in an era when
American banks and corporations defined free trade as a set of global
rules against the regulation of capitalism, and U.S. administrations
willingly did their bidding.
At this session, meeting in Abu Dhabi, three major issues were on the
table. None were resolved.
One was the very real problem of overfishing. Several proposals sensibly
called for limits on fishing subsidies. But the final draft text
included carve-outs for giant factory fishing fleets, and this was
blocked by a group of Third World nations.
A second issue was the perennial one of subsidized trade in agriculture.
Keeping people from starving supposedly distorts trade. Here again,
nations of the Global South led by India blocked the proposed
agribusiness-led deal, by insisting that nations have the right to use
public food stockholding for food security purposes.
A third issue was whether the U.S. would permit a return to mandatory
dispute resolution procedures, in which the WTO's supreme court, known
as the Appellate Body, is beset with conflicts of interest. The U.S. did
not relent and continues to block new appointments to the Appellate
Body, which denies it a quorum.
Corporate lobbyists and their enablers did gain two victories. They won
a two-year moratorium on taxes on digital trade. And Big Pharma
successfully enlisted the support of the U.S., the U.K., and Switzerland
to block expansion of the waiver of WTO intellectual-property
protections known as TRIPS, to facilitate production and distribution of
COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Shame on the U.S.
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For the most part, however, that was an exception. The Biden
administration has generally kept its commitment to change course, so
that nations have the right to pursue their own national economic and
social strategies, not impeded by global rules created by and for
corporations. If the WTO withers on the vine, so much the better.
The usual suspects deplored the outcome. A report by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies
aptly warned, "The capacity for one member to poison the system is
becoming an untenable feature of the WTO and is set to further derail
substantive progress in upcoming talks."
Politico wrote
:
"Last week's World Trade Organization summit was almost a complete
bust, and the Biden administration seems perfectly fine with that." But
later in the piece, the writer admitted: "So while the latest gathering
in Abu Dhabi represented another low point for the world trade body, it
also validated, in many ways, the administration's campaign pitch to
workers and industry that it's time to forge a new global consensus on
trade-one that prioritizes labor rights and national security rather
than breaking down barriers to global commerce."
Amen to that.
Issues like overfishing and the right balance between patent rights and
global public health do need to be resolved. Before the WTO, they were
resolved by treaties, and they can be again.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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