Somebody miscalculated.
“Globalization” was supposed to mean that public officials representing the dominant economic interests in the world’s most advanced economies get together in green rooms, close the doors, figure out what they want to do and then go out and tell the rest of the world how it’s going to be.
A few years ago in Seattle, a World Trade Organization ministerial summit was shockingly disrupted by anti-capitalist protesters --- labor unionists, environmentalists, leftists of various hues and even some relatively conservative economic nationalists --- who took to the streets chanting “Whose world? Our world!” and generally causing unexpected chaos in the streets. But adjustments were made. The demonstrators were dismissed as crazy anarchists, security was beefed up at subsequent global economic summits, and the events of September 11, 2001 created a climate of fear, warfare and repression most unconducive to protest movements.
At the recent Cancun WTO ministerial summit, the expected protesters gathered again, as did the police. In the expected melee, a young South Korean activist was killed. None of that disrupted the summit.
No, the people who derailed the Cancun summit from the fast track that the WTO’s customary leaders had laid out were not anarchist streetfighters, but public officials from some of the world’s most populous countries.
Eduardo Gudynas, a veteran Uruguayan journalist and the secretary-general of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology (CLAES), attended the Cancun summit and reported what he observed at a September 16 forum at Excedra Books.
“A European cow receives $800 in subsidies,” Gudynas noted, “while a US cow receives $1,000 in subsidies.” The main thing that happened at Cancun, he explained, was that a group of developing countries called into question such subsidies, the old in crowd went into its restricted caucuses and tried to pretend that they didn’t hear and the emerging powers wouldn’t stand for it.
Part of the triumphalist post-Cold War Western hubris has been the notion that with only one superpower left standing, the concept of “Third World” is obsolete. And indeed, the old Group of 77 non-aligned nations was broken into smithereens when the old East versus West paradigm became irrelevant and each of its member countries had to seek its own place in the context of a global market over which it had little or no control. But that was more than a decade ago, and since then market reforms haven’t brought prosperity to very many people or countries who weren’t rich in the first place. Economists and politicians in the industrialized countries can make the argument that working people in their societies have benefited from globalization according to the prevailing model --- not without opposition, but usually without being shouted down or spat upon --- but across Asia, Africa and Latin America snake oil has a more reputable brand name than what the International Monetary Fund et al have been selling.
Gudynas considered the costs of producing world staples like rice, wheat, corn and cotton, and how the sale of these commodities on the world market at lower-than-cost prices made possible by such subsidies as price supports and welfare safety nets for developed country farmers has laid waste to the economies countries that should be prospering from their rich farmland. He also reviewed industrial country duties on agricultural products, which go up with the level of processing --- cocoa gets to manufacturers in the United States and Europe from producing countries without the payment of much duty, but tariffs effectively prohibit the export of chocolate bars from Africa or Latin America to the industrialized world.
The agricultural subsidy issue isn’t new to the WTO, but one of the things that’s different now is that a “peace treaty” agreement by which WTO tribunals were barred from hearing agricultural disputes is set to expire at the end of this year. Still, rich countries’ farm lobbies are powerful and “the subject of agriculture wasn’t resolved --- repeatedly.”
“The idea of the US and the EU is to liberalize commerce, but not in agriculture,” Gudynas explained. When that concept proved unacceptable to the rest of the world, a more sophisticated framework of doing the same thing was introduced, mainly by the Europeans but with American support. They call it “multifunctionality.” The argument goes that farming is not simply an economic issue, but rather a subject with important social and environmental implications that should not be merely addressed in commercial terms.
It didn’t take long for developing countries to notice the interesting implications of multifunctionality. “Do the Europeans REALLY want to promote multifunctionality?” Gudynas asked, noting that Latin Americans could take advantage of the concept on subjects ranging from the environmental implications of cattle ranching to the cultural effect of a country being an importer rather than a producer of manufactured goods.
In response to the agricultural draft coming out of Washington and Brussels, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and 13 other countries wrote a counter-proposal, which, with a few exceptions like an allowance for subsidies on price of bread, amounted to unsubsidized free trade in agricultural commodities. In the preparations for the summit, a “compromise draft” that essentially restated the US-EU position was circulated.
Thus the Cancun gathering began with a joint press conference by the Brazilian, Chinese, Indian and South African delegates, at which they demanded that their positions be considered. When the sessions opened the first order of business was a huge row over the summit’s agenda.
Other arguments surfaced. Brazil, which doesn’t like foreigners telling it how to manage the Amazon Basin, objected to increased importance of environmental issues before the WTO. A number of Third World countries, especially in Asia and Africa, objected to the inclusion of the “Singapore issues” --- US-backed proposals that would ban discrimination against foreign corporations in government contracting and write new multinational investment rules --- in the summit discussions.
For a week, the developing countries objected point by point to the American and European positions, and for a time it sounded like some sort of accommodation would be made. Then, with a Sunday night deadline for a declaration, a draft that was due on Friday night made its mysterious appearance on Saturday afternoon. That draft, whose authorship and provenance was unacknowledged, was a restatement of the US and EU position.
There was an uproar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nigeria swelled the Group of 17 to the Group of 20, and more countries kept coming aboard to make up what Gudynas calls the “Group of 20-plus.” These countries took the initiative in the summit plenary, which worked through the night to hammer out an agreement.
Then, on Sunday afternoon as the summit was still underway in another room, the United States called a press conference and announced that the summit had collapsed. The Africans then walked out over the remaining developed countries’ insistence on addressing the Singapore issues. There was a lot of shouting and chaos, followed by a series of press conferences, many featuring undiplomatic bitterness.
For Gudynas, what’s important is “the formation of a coalition of the South, which has never happened before.” He also noted Brazil’s emergence as Latin America’s leader in the globalization process.
Not all of the region rallied around the Brazilian leadership at Cancun. Mexico and a few other Latin American countries were more or less identified with the US position, while Central America sat on the fence. Panama, whose most salient foreign trade policy is the regular shopping trips of Mireya Moscoso and her entourage to the United States and Europe, had virtually nothing to say. Colombia, which has become a military dependent of the United States, likewise was pretty quiet.
Gudynas noted that Latin America faces economic integration talks on at least three different levels (global, hemispheric and in regional blocs like MERCOSUR and Central America). He also considered attempts to negotiate a bilateral free trade deals with the United States, but argued that such a process offers little hope of success for Latin America. “For small countries,” he concluded, “a multilateral process is important.”
Next on the economic integration agenda is a Miami summit in November, and the US government is both twisting arms to change positions taken at Cancun and downplaying the Bush administration’s failure to get its proposals accepted in that forum. It seems, however, that there is no longer just one paradigm for globalization and that the nations of the South will not be browbeaten into line as they have been in the past.
Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
General strike called over Social Security crisis
US, EU don't get their way at Cancun WTO summit
AMCHAM tourism forum
