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The World Trade Organisation (WTO)
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an international body that is supposed to oversee world trade to the benefit of us all. Yet since its establishment in 1995, it has rapidly developed a reputation for increasing inequality between countries. It is failing poor countries in favour of the rich, and is now failing citizens in favour of corporations.
Perhaps this is no surprise given the WTO’s remit and its way of working. The WTO promotes "free trade" or "trade liberalisation": the economic exchange of goods and services between countries, without government intervention and regulation. This is an approach that favours the strong – those that can already compete on international markets – over the weak. The WTO comprises 150 members but although there is a lot of hype about its ‘one-member, one-vote’ system, in reality nobody actually votes and decision-making is prone to the whims and bullying tactics of rich countries as well as the lobbying of multinational companies.
International trade in goods and services is worth over £11.5 billion a day, but it is rich countries and their multinationals that reap the vast majority of the benefits. The rules that govern world trade discriminate against the poor: the poorest 49 countries make up 10 per cent of the world's population, but account for only 0.4 per cent of world trade. These countries struggle to get their interests prioritised in WTO talks.
WTO rules can hamper basic economic development in the world’s poorest countries, while actually benefiting richer nations:
- Developing countries must open their economies, making it difficult for countries to nurture their own industries to compete.
- Developing countries have to implement rules that can make buying essential medicines more costly.
- Developing countries are pushed to open up essential service sectors like health, education and water to foreign multinationals.
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