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 prodevelopment 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 marketoriented 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 nonexclusive.
• 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 HipHop
• 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