The World Trade Organisation

Structure and Objectives of the Lecture

• Section One: Uncover the formal ideology of the WTO and examine the modern history of the world trade regime

• Section Two: Present some data about the organisation of WTO and outline its major areas of operation

• Section Three: WTO and commodity trade

Section Four: Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs)

• Section Five: Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights

Section Six/Conclusion: Attempt to place WTO in its global historical context

Section One:

The underlying ideology of WTO is little different from that of Adam Smith and François Quesnay

Comparative advantage and market based trade

Multilateralism is a superior method of achieving free trade than bilateralism which leads to fracture

• Idea (myth) of the great depression is important to this ideology

• Also empirical link between levels of trade and development.

• The WTO mum and dad was the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)

• The GATT was a agreement (a continuous series of talks) not a organisation

• GATT was created in 1947 US Congress Blocked plans to create a ‘proper’ international organisation to regulate trade

• The same ideology regulated the GATT as the WTO but it was more diplomatic and less legalistic, possessed fewer sanctions and was narrower scope

• In some way reflection of the Ruggie’s ‘embedded liberal comprise’

Section Two

• WTO created with little fanfare and debate in 1995 out of GATT Urgargy round

• 149 Members in February 2006 • Attempt to put Multilateral Trading System on a much

surer footing• Organisation of Networks. WTO is largely run by state

officials not its own secretariat (it only employs 500 people. The World Bank employs over 6000)

• The WTO does actually do anything (expect monitor) but it is instead a vehicle through which state’s do things

• Over 40 different committees and working groups (General Council)

• Perhaps its easier to understand the WTO as a number of forums

• Ministerial Meeting every two years (Seattle (1999), Doha(2001), Cancun (2003) Hong Kong (2005))

• Formally very democratic but realities are quite different……….

Section Three: Commodity Trade

• Agriculture is a ‘special’ area (US and EU pact)• Concessions to Underdeveloped World: Phase

out date of 2013 for agricultural export subsidies• Duty free/quota free access for least developed

but only on 97 per cent of tariff lines by US and Japan

• Cotton DF/QF and export subsidies immediately• Also abolition of Multi Fibre Arrangement

between 1995-2005

• At least cosmetically major moves towards liberalisation and creation of a pro-development agenda

• But are concessions real?

• Lift restrictions on items that you do not import from developing countries anyway

• Also Agriculture is a Red Herring…..

• Cairns Group: Argentina | Australia | Bolivia | Brazil | Canada | Chile | Colombia | Costa Rica | Guatemala | Indonesia | Malaysia | New Zealand | Pakistan |Paraguay | Philippines | South Africa | Thailand | Uruguay

• Also who benefits within these countries?

• Or……•

Section Four: TRIMs

• What the WTO understands trade is very broad

• TRIMs investment/trade in services

• Area were rich states have a clear advantage

• Quite intrusive in that they impact on financial regulation and public service provision

• The issue of TRIPs has come up in relation to reform of the NHS reform

The WTO has said that only a monopoly provider in the public sector is excluded from coverage. A service is commercial when patients have a choice of hospitals—that is when hospitals are effectively in competition regardless of whether ownership is in public or private hands. According to this interpretation, the market-oriented reforms of the NHS Plan redefine the NHS as a commercial service subject to trade rules. At the very least, final determination of the status of the NHS will be dependent on a disputes settlements panel of the WTO (Price and Pollock, 2002).

Section Five: TRIPs

• Most controversial aspect of the entire trade regime

• Great deal in Media concerning AIDS drugs• Authored by major drugs and media firms in core

capitalist state’s• Intellectual property is different from physical

property • Difficult to establish creation (always drawing on

pool of common heritage) and it is non-exclusive.

• Patenting regimes represent a compromise between public and private goods

• Shift towards private goods in last few decades in key economies in terms of lengths and scope of patenting

• Patenting of Genetic Material • Herdergen, M. (2002) ‘Patents on parts of the human

body: salient issues under EC and WTO law’, Journal of World Intellectual Property, 5(2):145-55.

• Market capitalisation of US biotechnology firms increased from $45 billion in 1994 to $311 billion in 2005

• TRIPs seek to internationalise this protection

• Also biopiracy (Neam Tree )

• As capitalist fails recognize pre-capitalist forms of common property

• Common heritage of mankind….

• Primitive accumulation redux

• Also it is impossible to prove a link between innovation and property rights protection. Benefits of protection offset by costs of preventing diffusion

• Sampling and the Development of Hip-Hop

• Neo-liberals themselves are ambiguous on TRIPs, some see them as anti-competitive

• TRIPs contested not a completed project

Section Six/ Conclusion

• Creation of WTO and attendant agreements reflects both material developments in global political economy and itself represents a attempt to create new set of material conditions

• The conflicts WTO reflect laws of combined and uneven development

• In many respects WTO empowers state elites• Two important points of reference in pervious

literature

• First: Commodity Chains

• Second: Harvey. Particularly Image, accumulation by dispossession and TRIPs