The AFL-CIO recognizes the potential benefits of a system of multilateral trade rules. However, those rules must protect workers’ rights, human rights, democracy, and the environment, and so far, the WTO has failed to rise to this challenge. The WTO has refused even to discuss the social dimension of globalization, let alone carry out the institutional reforms necessary to make the WTO more transparent, democratic, and accountable. This failure to deliver is responsible for the lack of progress on the WTO agenda since the Uruguay Round.
Developing country governments forcefully reminded the WTO in Cancún this week that in many places their populations are falling deeper into poverty and despair and that they have not yet seen the benefits of global trade liberalization trickle down to their workers or the rural poor. In fact, trade liberalization in the critical sector of textiles and apparel is only speeding the race to the bottom, and many developing country governments expressed concern in Cancún that the phase-out of textile and apparel quotas in 2005 and further tariff reduction in the absence of significant rule changes will devastate their textile and apparel sectors.
The WTO agenda in Cancún contained little promise and many perils for American workers. The United States and other developed countries were called on to open their own markets – for their most sensitive industrial goods – without receiving reciprocal market access from developing countries in return, even from export powerhouses like China, with whom we run an annual trade deficit of more than $100 billion. At the same time, talks aimed at weakening U.S. trade laws were to be accelerated. These talks would very likely result in further undermining our ability to use antidumping, subsidy, and safeguard measures effectively to protect American jobs. The crucial issue of using the global trade system to protect core workers’ rights was never even on the agenda. And negotiations on investment and competition policy appeared to be headed in the wrong direction, toward enhancing the power and flexibility of multinational corporations vis-à-vis national governments without imposing enforceable obligations to respect international workers’ rights.
This combination of opening our own market, weakening our trade laws, making zero progress on workers’ rights, and failing to achieve reciprocal market access would have been a disaster for American workers and their families. For that reason, we call on our government and other WTO members to take this opportunity to reexamine the fundamental assumptions and objectives of the WTO. Without a profound reorientation to address the social and employment dimensions of global liberalization, WTO talks will continue to founder. Broad political support in both rich and poor countries will be elusive so long as the benefits of trade liberalization remain concentrated in the hands of a small multinational corporate elite.
Contact Guillermo Meneses 202-637-5018
