You mean the imposition of free trade on poor nations, lest any will possibly develop manufacturing capacity in a fashion that rich nations have. Rich nations, however, continue to exercise old-fashioned protectionism against poor ones:
***** Walden Bello* <W.Bello at focusweb.org> <walden at csi.com.ph> has written several interesting papers on the WTO, UNCTAD and Davos. You may be able to find them at http://www.focusweb.org/ or contact him by email.
By Walden Bello* W.Bello at focusweb.org walden at csi.com.ph
...Perhaps the best indicators of the marginal consideration given to developing countries in the WTO is the fate of the measures that were supposed to respond to the special conditions of developing countries. There were three key agreements which promoters of the WTO claimed were specifically said to be designed to meet the needs of the South: The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which mandated that the system of quotas on Third World exports of textiles and garments to the North would be dismantled over ten years. The Special Ministerial Agreement approved in Marrakesh in April 1994, which decreed that special compensatory measures would be taken to counteract the negative effects of trade liberalization on the least developed countries; The Agreement on Agriculture, which, while "imperfect," nevertheless was said to promise greater market access to developing country agricultural products and begin the process of bringing down the high levels of state support and subsidization of EU and US agriculture, which was resulting in the dumping of massive quantities of grain on Third World markets. What happened to these measures?
The Special Ministerial Decision taken at Marrakesh to provide assistance to "Net Food Importing Countries" to offset the reduction of subsidies that would make food imports more expensive for the "Net Food Importing Countries" has never been implemented. Though world cereal prices more than doubled in 1995/96, the World Bank and the IMF scotched an idea of any offsetting aid by arguing that "the price increase was not due to the Agreement on Agriculture, and besides there was never any agreement anyway on who would be responsible for providing the assistance."
The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing committed the developed countries to bring under WTO discipline all textile and garment imports, over four stages, ending on January 1, 2005 A key feature was supposed to be the lifting of quotas on imports restricted under the Multifiber Agreement (MFA) and similar schemes which had been used to contain penetration of developed country markets by cheap clothing and textile imports from the Third World. Developed countries retained, however, the right to choose which product lines to liberalize when, so that they first brought mainly unrestricted products into the WTO discipline and postponed dealing with restricted products till much later. Thus, in the first phase, all restricted products continued to be under quota, as only items where imports were not considering threatening-like felt hats or yarn of carded fine animal hair--were included in the developed countries' notifications. Indeed, the notifications for the coverage of products for liberalization on January 1, 1998 showed that "even at the second stage of implementation only a very small proportion" of restricted products would see their quotas lifted.
Given this trend, John Whalley notes that "the belief is now widely held in the developing world that in 2004, while the MFA may disappear, it may well be replaced by a series of other trade instruments, possibly substantial increases in anti-dumping duties."
When it comes to the Agreement on Agriculture, which was sold to developing countries during the Uruguay Round as a major step toward providing market access to developing country imports and bringing down the high levels of domestic support for first world farming interests that results in dumping of commodities in third world markets, little gains in market access after five years into developed country markets have been accompanied by even higher levels of overall subsidization--through ingenious combinations of export subsidies, export credits, market support, and various kinds of direct income payments. The figures speak for themselves: the level of overall subsidization of agriculture in the OECD countries rose from $182 billion in 1995 when the WTO was born to $280 billion in 1997 to $362 billion in 1998! Instead of the beginning of a New Deal, the AOA, in the words of a former Philippine Secretary of Trade, "has perpetuated the uneveness of a playing field which the multilateral trading system has been trying to correct. Moreover, this has placed the burden of adjustment on developing countries relative to countries who can afford to maintain high levels of domestic support and export subsidies."
The collapse of the agricultural negotiations in Seattle is the best example of how extremely difficult it is to reform the AOA. The European Union opposed till the bitter end language in an agreement that would commit it to "significiant reduction" of its subsidies. But the US was not blameless. It resolutely opposed any effort to cut back on its forms of subsidies such as export credits, direct income for farmers, and "emergency" farm aid, as well as any mention of its practice of dumping products in developing country markets....
<http://www.indg.org/unctad.htm> *****
Poor nations are allowed neither to go socialist nor to exercise protectionism. On top of that, rich nations continue to subsidize their agriculture & fail to give market access to poor ones. All that in addition to protectionism exercised through the enforcement of intellectual property.
Yoshie