Understanding the issues: what’s the matter with trade?
Trade is not an end in itself, but a means by which to promote human dignity, sustainable societies and economic justice. This publication aims to help identify some key problems of multilateral trade liberalisation, with particular respect to upholding poor people’s human rights and real opportunities. The document argues that economic efficiency and growth cannot justify trade rules that undermine the rights of the poor.
The authors deem that if developing countries can identify common interests, they stand to gain from a multilateral and rules-based system such as the WTO. In this sense, only binding multilateral agreements may accord poor countries and their citizens collective influence over rich countries’ unjust and destructive trade policies.
The paper demonstrates these two conclusions:
- trade agreements must not enforce laws on developing countries that threaten the right to life or health
- the growing trade in services must not lead to the commercialisation of fundamental services.
It then offers the following recommendations:
- concerning agricultural trade, all developing countries must be given ample policy space to protect food security and the livelihoods of their vulnerable farmers
- domestic coupled subsidies must either be eliminated altogether, or the multilateral disciplines for managing subsidies must be radically reformed
- a fair multilateral system must leave some space for intervention on the part of northern governments
- in the context of GATS (the services agreement), developing countries need to be granted flexibility since they are in the dynamic process of building social infrastructures
- to maintain full governmental authority over water services, decision-makers need to take into consideration all the different services involved in the GATS’s provision of water
- TRIPS (the intellectual property agreement) must be reformed to prevent the theft of biological resources from poor societies.
