For immediate release:
Seattle / Doha, Qatar, November 14, 2001. Reporting at the close of the WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, Dave Batker, senior economist and a director of the Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange (APEX), stated that despite the claims of success by the United States and WTO officials, the Qatar meeting once again revealed the WTO to be an organization that remains in a state of serious disarray and internal conflict due to a fundamental neglect of democracy, social and environmental concerns, and over the economic concerns of developing countries.
According to APEX, the meeting started with the Big Four: the United States, the EU, Japan, and Canada attempting to bully the rest of the world into accepting their draft text that included sweeping new agreements. The meeting ended with last minute salvage efforts by the Big Four to offer compromises that postponed most of their aggressive goals, and conceded some key demands by developing countries.
The Doha Ministerial failed to take up the new issues sought by the Big Four on Investment, Competition Policy, Procurement and Trade Facilitation simply postponing these issues for two years. Some of the areas that were deemed as significant progress were actually, a turning back of the WTO clock to the pre-WTO era. An example of this was the relenting by the Big Four to agree that patents for pharmaceuticals could be ignored in order to protect public health.
"They can call it anything they want but this is not a new round at all," said Dave Batker of APEX, "rather it is a desperate attempt to put some gloss on an organization which with each passing year is revealed to be more dysfunctional and in conflict with what most citizens of planet earth really want. As currently being negotiated, our trade representatives are promoting agreements that hurt the global environment, hurt labor rights, hurt most of the developing world's peoples and, closer to home, hurt Washington State's farmers."
Mr. Batker referred to the WTO goal of removing all trade subsidies including those that federal, state, and local governments now provide in agriculture and fisheries. However, there is no attempt to distinguish between damaging subsidies that might for example encourage overfishing, and subsidies that might support shifts to less damaging fishing gear. The reduction of Washington State subsidies for exports would require the eventual removal of $500 million dollars of Washington State tax exemptions for exporters including over $140 million for agriculture, $125 million for aircraft and $80 million for manufacturing.
For more information:
Dave Batker can be reached in Doha for interviews throughout the Doha Ministerial starting November 8 at cell phone: 011-31-6-1509-3589. (please wait as much as 3 minutes for the connection to be made). He will also be back in Seattle on Friday.
Maria Cain, APEX Trade Policy Analyst, can be reached in Seattle at: 418-0671
Note: An AP Photo of Dave Batker protesting WTO in Qatar is available. (See front page of the November 14 business section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.) ________________________
The APEX Position on International Trade
Trade involves countless products that impact many aspects of all our lives and the planet. Trade is complicated and should be treated as such. In some cases trade should be banned: the trade in nuclear weapons, toxic waste, toxic chemicals, slaves, endangered species. In other cases trade should be liberalized and barriers removed. In the areas of fisheries and forests, incentives for plunder make international, national and local regulation essential. Agriculture is tremendously complicated. In some cases free trade in food will relieve food insecurity, in other cases exacerbate it. Careful analysis and open public discussion and involvement are crucial to understanding what kind of trade rules really produce sustainable benefits.
APEX has conducted studies on the trade in toxic waste, shrimp, and forest and on local subsidies and supports for trade. We feel that while trade barriers in Asia, Africa and Asia have been well studied, similar barriers in the US, EU and Japan have largely been ignored.
We have an opportunity to build international trade that is within ecological boundaries; promotes development, economic health and poverty eradication; eliminates negative externalities; reduces wealth disparities; enhances the environment; increases economic efficiency and productivity; builds a more humane world; increases benefits to people laboring to produce goods and services and is ecologically sustainable for future generations. So far, the WTO has demonstrated it is not up to this task. Only through a temporary break from extending WTO powers, negotiations and a review of the WTO can we reach these sustainable trade objectives.
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Jim Puckett, Director Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange (APEX) 1305 Fourth Ave., Suite 606 Seattle, Washington 98101 USA Phone: 1.206.652.5555, Fax: 1.206.652.5750 E-Mail: apex at seanet.com Web: www.a-p-e-x.org
A project of the Tides Center