On November 29th in Seattle, Washington, the World
Trade Organization (WTO) will be meeting to discuss measures to increase the flow of goods
and services from country to country, or, as they call it, to ensure "free
trade." During the meeting thousands of protesters representing hundreds of labor,
environmental, and human rights groups will be organizing to mount what is likely to be
the biggest demonstration in the U.S. since the 1968 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago. What is this all about, why should you know about it, and what has it to do with
anthropology?
In brief, the issue is about the rights of an unelected body (the WTO) to force
countries to dismantle environmental, labor, and social legislation when it is deemed to
be an "unfair restriction on trade"; you need to know about it because your
government has ceded to the WTO powers that, until a few years ago, were held by state and
federal governments. It has to do with anthropology because of the effect it may have on
cultural diversity and integrity. But first some background.
In 1944 at Bretton Woods, the industrialized nations gathered to plan economic
strategies for the end of World War II. One of the goals was to reduce barriers to global
trade from the imposition of tariffs on goods; its instrument was the Global Agreement on
tariffs and Trade (GATT). The idea was that if goods could more easily flow from country
to country, all would benefit. In 1994 the WTO was formed to eliminate non-tariff barriers
to trade. Thus if a country's health law banned the importation of a product of another
country because of fear of health risks associated with that product, that country could
charge the banning country with creating an unfair barrier to trade. The country passing
the law would then have to prove that the ban was "scientifically based." If it
could not, then trade sanctions and penalties could be applied to the banning country.
Thus Europe has banned the importation of hormone treated beef because there is evidence
that certain hormones can cause cancer. The United States and Canada, however, have no
such ban, and hormones are used extensively in cattle raising. The United States brought
the case to the WTO claiming that the ban on beef was an "unfair restraint of
trade," and that there was no clear scientific evidence of health risks. The WTO
ruled in favor of the U.S. thus forcing European consumers to accept American
hormone-treated beef or pay penalties. So far Europe has chosen to pay. In another case,
France wants to ban asbestos because of feared health risks, but Canada (the world's
largest asbestos manufacturer) is challenging the ban claiming there is no worldwide
scientific consensus that the ban is warranted. In another case, the European Union has
passed a law requiring the labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms. The
law is based on fears that we do not yet know enough about the side-effects and/or health
risks of genetically engineered foods. The American government claims that this is an
unfair restraint of trade (some 40-60% of American soy and corn are genetically modified
variants), and that there is no clear scientific evidence that there are risks. And so on.
Thus "free trade," as some claim, has less to do with trade than it does with
allowing global corporations to sidestep environmental, health, and social regulations
enacted by local and national governments [click here for more on this]. But
it does even more than that; it continues a process whereby goods produced in the most
industrialized countries of the world, replace goods produced locally, goods that bear the
imprint of local cultures. This process whereby local cultures and producers are
overwhelmed by mass industrialization is not new. It began centuries before as Western
traders invaded new areas. In the 1740s the British established trading posts in Virginia,
and soon British-made goods were replacing items that had, for centuries, been produced by
indigenous peoples such as the Cherokee. In 1751, the Cherokee chief Skiagonota would
observe that "the clothes we wear we cannot make ourselves. They are made for us. We
use their ammunition with which to kill deer. We cannot make our guns. Every necessity of
life we have from the white people" Later in the eighteenth century the British
destroyed what had been a thriving textile industry in India by flooding India with cheap
imitations made in the factories of Manchester and other English cities, later destroying
the textile industries of African colonies in much the same way. And so on.
Today local cultures are being replaced by a new global culture, originating, for the
most part in the highly industrialized countries of the world, and aided by multilateral
institutions such as the WTO. Free trade provisions of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) have destroyed the economic vitality of small Mexican farmers who cannot
compete with the huge agricultural conglomerates based in the United States, and are
forced to sell their farms and seek wage labor in the cities. In the case of Mexico the
provisions of NAFTA led to a rebellion in 1994 of
mostly Mayan farmers in the state of Chiapas. Billboards (mostly aimed
at Western tourists) for computer magazines grace the roads leading from Katmandu in
Nepal, and a new Disney theme park is planned for Hong Kong. But, as local and
indigenous cultures have for centuries been displaced, so local laws and regulations
intended to protect people from environmental, labor, and social abuses are also being
displaced by agencies controlled and manipulated, for the most part, by corporate powers
that will not only determine what we buy, but also determine the conditions under which
our goods are produced and how they are distributed.
You can find out more about the WTO protest at the Seattle
WTO Website or at Seattle WTO. You can
read more about the issues involved at Rachel's
Environment and Health Weekly in their feature on the WTO protest (part 1 and part 2). You
can find out more about the dangers of "free trade" at Public Citizen Global Trade Watch,
or at Economic Globalization
