Cancun: World Trade Organisation talks collapse
10 September 2003

The refusal of imperialist countries to cut the huge subsidies they give to their farmers and agribusinesses has led to the collapse of the WTO summit in Cancún, Mexico.

A bloc of bourgeois semi-colonial governments - backed by a huge staff of NGO advisors- refused to be bribed and bullied into accepting the North's demands to open up negotiations on new rules for foreign investment as a pre-condition for a reductions in market barriers to Third World exports. No deal was better than bad deal, they said.

As in Seattle four years ago, the failure to agree a framework for further reduction in tariffs and subsidies has dealt a huge body blow to the power of the World Trade Organisation. Given the centrality of international trade expansion for growth in the world capitalist economy the failure to agree a new round of cuts in tariffs and subsidies, or loosening up the rules governing multinational investment, the incipient recovery of the global economy underway since earlier this year, is under threat. The advance of globalised capital, which stuttered to a halt and went into reverse in 2001-2002, could continue to be blocked.

When the Doha Round of trade talks was launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the North's multinationals hoped they could get the South to agree to a new global regime on investment rules that would lead to the big MNCs being treated much the same as locally owned companies - much to the advantage of the former.

In return the EU and US governments would offer a few conscessions: a deal on access to generic cheaper drugs in the South that would help to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases; a lowering of subsidies to their bloated agribusinesses and large farmers; some reductions tariffs imposed on exports to the North by developing countries.

In the two years since Doha little of substance has emerged; indeed last year Bush increased the pot of subsidies to US farmers by $90bn! A last minute eve-of-summit agreement by the US government to unblock a deal on access to generic drugs was put on the table to mollify the South&Mac226;s trade delegations as they set off for Mexico.

But if Washington and Brussels thought this would act as an inducement it failed; it merely confirmed to the South&Mac226;s trade representatives that the big powers and their business backers act with breathtaking cynicism.

The bottom line remains: the EU and USA give their big farmers and agribusinesses $300bn a year to overproduce foodstuffs and thereby lower world market prices. This then forces smaller, poorer farmers in semi-colonies to go out of business.

For example, the USA is the world&Mac226;s biggest producer of cotton. Washington gives its 25,000 cotton farmers $4bn a year in handouts to produce $3bn worth of cotton! This ruins the livelihood of Africa&Mac226;s small cotton producers.

Not being able to afford subsidies the semi-colonial governments use tariffs on imported goods to protect some domestic industries and farmers. In the last 20 years these tariffs have been radically scaled-back under the pressure of the west and due to the corrupt and pro-imperialist outlook of most of the governments in the South.

The anti-capitalist movement allied to the trade unions and peasant organisations have &Mac246; over the last five years&Mac246; organised as a counter-pressure on these often spineless representatives of the Third World. They have brought the issues out of small committee rooms and into the glare of global publicity and onto the streets.

Despite the location and the poverty of the anti-capitalist protestors in Mexico the anti-capitalist movement made sure that it once again had thousands on the streets of Cancún. One South Korean farmer committed suicide on the barricades in protest; others tore down sections of the fence that separated them from the deal-makers.

The right-wing NGOs like Cafod bemoaned the failure of the WTO talks in Cancún, hoping that bad deal could be improved upon in the years ahead. They are wrong. The world&Mac226;s poor do not need the WTO. What they need is a unilateral abolition of subsidies to agribusinesses and that promotes overproduction and the destruction of small farmers in the Third World. They need unrestricted access to the west&Mac226;s domestic markets for their produce. They need help from the trade unions of the west to raise their wages and conditions so that jobs in Europe and USA cannot be shifted east to „more competitive‰ labour markets.

Above all we need a growing and co-ordinated global anti-capitalist movement that continues to dog our rulers at their big events, launches effective protests and delivers widespread strike action.

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