Earlier today, the World Trade Organization put out yet another draft text of trade rules for agriculture. Negotiators continue to press on, despite a growing consensus that further trade deregulation is not what is needed to address increasing global inequities between rich and poor.
In a press release we put out today, the director of IATP's Trade Information Project, Carin Smaller, summed it up this way, "The text looks like a bad repair job. The Chair of the Agriculture negotiations, Ambassador Falconer, has filled in some of the holes, but the basic design remains fundamentally inadequate. The walls of the house are crumbling down. This latest paint job is not going to fix the problem.”
A new poll by BBC World backs up the idea that the WTO bubble contains different air than the rest of us. In a survey of people in 34 countries, 64 percent felt that the benefits and burdens of globalization had not been shared fairly. The weight of opinion in 22 countries was that "economic globalization, including trade and investment" is growing too quickly. And this poll was taken before the global stock market fall in mid-January.
IATP will put out a more detailed analysis of the new WTO agriculture text next week.
