1. New USFTA sign-on statement: please endorse as soon as possible
2. Rally against the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: 27 October Canberra
3. Whither the WTO after Cancun? Sydney seminar, 14 October
4. Canberra hearing: Senate GATS / USFTA inquiry, 2 October
5. The Meaning of Cancun
6. ‘Free to be Australian’ Public Meeting: Sydney, 6 October

1. New USFTA sign-on statement: please endorse as soon as possible

AFTINET members and supporters will soon be receiving a letter and statement of concerns about the USFTA. We are asking organisations and individuals to endorse this and either post the endorsement to us or (for individuals only) to endorse it on the AFTINET website.

Please endorse it as soon as possible, as the next round of negotiations is in October and it will be a great way to demonstrate community concern about this agreement.

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2. Rally against the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: 27 October Canberra

US and Australian negotiators start the next round of FTA negotiations in Canberra on the 27th of October. They need to know that Australians do not want a FTA which threatens or undermines the PBS, local content rules for film and television, quarantine rules and our right to say no to GE food and crops. We say NO to any agreement which reduces the capacity of government to regulate and gives greater rights to multinational corporations.

Speakers will include:  Doug Cameron (National Secretary AMWU), Senators Kerry Nettle (Greens) and Aden Ridgeway (Democrats) and an ALP speaker.

Where: Parliament House, Canberra.

If you are travelling from Sydney, book now to assure your seat on the bus, only $25 return, Sydney Canberra round trip!! To book a seat or to register for carpooling for the day contact George on 0412 704 426 or democanberra@yahoo.com.au

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3. Whither the WTO after Cancun? Sydney report back seminar 14 October, 5.30 pm, Parliament House

Reports from the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun

Why did the WTO Ministerial Conference in Mexico collapse? What does this mean for the future of the WTO, and for the future of international trade? Find out at this public seminar with speakers who attended the meetings in Cancun.

When: Tuesday 14 October, 5.30 pm

Where: Room 814 Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney

Chair: Andrea Durbach, Director, Public Interest Advocacy Centre

Speakers:

Jeff Atkinson, Advocacy Coordinator, Oxfam Community Aid Abroad and

Dr Patricia Ranald, Principal Policy Officer, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, and Convenor, Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network

For further information contact Louise Southalan at AFTINET on (02) 9299 7833 or email lsouthalan@piac.asn.au

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4. Canberra hearing: Senate GATS / USFTA inquiry 2 October

The Senate Committee inquiring into GATS and USFTA will be holding a public hearing on Thursday 2 October in Canberra, in committee room 2S1. This will be the final hearing for the GATS/ US FTA inquiry, and DFAT is the only witness.

For further info contact Andrea McAuliffe, Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee,
Ph 02 6277 3868 Fax 02 6277 5818.

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5. The Meaning of Cancun

By Walden Bello, Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines and Executive Director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy organisation Focus on the Global South. 

(This is an extract of an article that appeared in the "Perspective" Section of the Bangkok Post, Sept. 19, 2003.)

When the chair of the World Trade Organisation’s Fifth Ministerial, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Derbez, declared that there was no consensus and abruptly ended the meeting in mid-afternoon on September 14, his act had momentous consequences.

First, the collapse of the WTO meeting represented a victory for people throughout the world, not a "missed opportunity" for a global deal between North and South. The so-called Doha Round initiated in Qatar during the fourth ministerial in November 2001 was never a "development round." And what little promise it offered for the poor countries had been betrayed long before Cancun. Emblematic of this state of affairs was Washington’s refusal to live up to the Doha Declaration’s placing public health concerns over the patent rights of its pharmaceutical corporations up till the eve of the ministerial and its agreeing only after it got the developing countries to agree to a cumbersome procedure that would make cheap imports of life-saving drugs for people suffering from HIV-AIDS and other dreaded diseases extremely difficult.

Not even the most optimistic developing country came to Cancun expecting some concessions from the big rich countries in the interest of development. Most developing country governments came to Cancun with a defensive stance. The big challenge was not that of forging a historic "New Deal" but one of preventing the US and the EU from imposing new demands on the developing countries while escaping any multilateral disciplines on their trade regimes.

In this regard, it was not the developing countries that brought about the collapse, as US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick implied in his final press conference. That responsibility lies squarely with the United States and Europe. When the second revision of the draft of the ministerial text appeared early on Saturday, Sept. 13, it was clear that the US and the European Union were not willing to make any significant cuts in their high levels of agricultural subsidisation even as they continued to intransigently demand that the developing countries bring down their tariffs. It was also clear that the EU and US were determined to disregard the Doha Declaration’s stipulation that the explicit consensus of all member states was required to begin negotiations on the so-called "new issues" of investment, competition policy, government procurement, and trade facilitation.

Negotiate on our terms or not at all: that was the meaning of the second revision. Not surprisingly, developing countries could not lend their consensus to a framework of negotiations so detrimental to their interests.

Second, the WTO has been severely damaged. Two collapsed ministerials (Seattle, Cancun) and one that barely made it (Doha) recommends the institution to no one. For the trade superpowers, it is no longer a viable instrument for imposing their will on others. For the developing countries, membership has not brought protection from abuses by the powerful economies, much less serve as a mechanism of development. This is not to say that the WTO is dead. There will be efforts to bring the WTO back from the brink, like the US and the EU did at Doha. But the likelihood is that, with lack of momentum from a successful ministerial, the machinery will slow down significantly. Zoellick was correct in doubting that the Doha Round will be finished by its deadline of January 2005 and European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy was simply trying to put a bright face to a bad situation when he said that the WTO had completed 30 per cent of the Doha agenda.

Aside from the loss of momentum and the impairment of the basic functioning of the organisation’s machinery, growing protectionism in the rich countries, a global economy plagued by long-term stagnation, and the unravelling of the Atlantic Alliance owing to political differences on issues such as Iraq do not provide a favourable climate for the WTO’s serving as the main mechanism for trade liberalisation and globalisation. The WTO may eventually suffer the fate it helped inflict on the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development): surviving but increasingly ineffective and irrelevant.

This raises the question: even was we approve of the failure of a ministerial that was loaded against the interests of the developing countries, should we welcome the institutional weakening of the WTO? After all, some have argued, the WTO is a set of rules and machinery that, with the appropriate balance of forces, can be invoked to protect the interests of the developing countries. Partisans of this view say that one is better off with the WTO than with the bilateral trade deals that US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said at his final press conference would now receive Washington’s priority after the failure of Cancun.

The truth is that this is a false choice. The WTO is not a neutral set of rules, procedures, and institutions that can be used defensively to protect the interests of weaker players. The rules themselves, the main ones being the supremacy of the principle of free trade, "most favoured nation" principle (that countries must provide to all partners the privileges they provide their most favoured partner) and the principle of "national treatment" (that foreign service providers must have the same rights and privileges as domestic providers), institutionalise the current system of global economic inequality.

What weapons the weak countries have are few. The principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries (that they must have a different set of rules from developed countries owing to historical and structural differences), which was institutionalised in the predecessor of the WTO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, has a very weak status in the World Trade Organisation.. Indeed, in Cancun, the US and the EU completely banished from negotiations the special and differential treatment agenda that had been mandated by the Doha Declaration. The arrogant attitude toward such demands was exemplified in one US trade spokesman dismissive statement that the WTO was "not a welfare organisation but a trade organisation."

The WTO is not a truly multilateral organisation. It is a mechanism to perpetuate the US / EU condominium in the global economy.

Third, global civil society was a major player in Cancun. Since Seattle, the interaction between civil society and governments on trade issues has intensified. Non-governmental organisations have assisted developing country governments in the political and technical aspects of negotiations.

They have mobilised international public opinion against the retrograde stands of rich country governments, as in the drug patents and public health issue. They have emerged as strong domestic coalitions that put their governments’ feet to the fire to stiffen them against any further concessions to the rich countries. If many developing country governments resisted pressure from the US and the EU in Cancun, it was because they feared political retribution from civil society groups back home.

With peoples’ movements marching in the city centre and NGO’s demonstrating hourly inside and outside the convention hall from the opening session on, Cancun became a microcosm of the power of global dynamics of states and civil society. The suicide of Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae at the police barricades warned everyone at the convention centre that they could no longer take the plight of the world’s small farmers for granted, and this was acknowledged by the governments with the one-minute moment of silence they observed in his memory. Truly, the collapse of the Cancun ministerial was another confirmation of the New York Times’ observation that global civil society is the world’s second superpower.

Fourth, the Group of 21 is a significant new development that could contribute to altering the global balance of forces. Led by Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, the new grouping stalemated the EU and US drive to make Cancun one more sad episode in the history of underdevelopment. The potential of this group was indicated by Celso Amorin, the Brazilian Trade Minister who has emerged as its spokesman, when he said that it represented over half the world’s population and over 63 per cent of its farmers. Amorin reflected the stance and potential of the new formation in his address to the ministerial when he said: "We stand united, we will remain united. We sincerely hope that others will hear our message and, instead of confronting us or trying to divide us, will join forces in our endeavour to inject new life into the multilateral trading system. To bring it closer to

the needs and aspirations of those who have been at its margins, indeed the vast majority, those who have not had the chance to reap the fruit of their toils. It is high time to change this reality. This should be the spirit of Cancun."

Not surprisingly, US trade negotiators saw the Group of 21 as representing a resumption of the South’s push for a "new international economic order" in the 1970’s. However, much lies in the realm of possibility, and the potential of this new formation must not be overestimated. It is now mainly an alliance focused on radically reducing the subsidies of northern agriculture. And it still has to meaningfully address the desire for comprehensive protection of smaller farmers in the smaller countries that are mainly focused on production for the domestic production. The reservations of some of the smaller countries is understandable since the Group of 21’s most vocal members are large agro exporters, though most have significant domestic-market-oriented, peasant based production as well.

Nevertheless, there is no reason that a positive agenda of small-farmer-oriented sustainable agriculture cannot be placed at the centre of the group’s advocacy. There is also no reason why the Group cannot extend its mandate to forging a common program on industry and services as well. Even more exciting is the possibility that the Group of 21 can serve as the engine of South-South cooperation that goes beyond trade to coordination of policies on investment, capital flows, industrial policy, social policy, environmental policy. Such forms of South-South cooperation centred on the priority of development over trade and markets provide the alternative to both the WTO and the bilateral free trade agreements now being pursued by the US and the EU.

In articulating its agenda, the Group of 21 will find a natural ally in global civil society. With the US and the EU determined to defend the status quo and with both seeking to sow divisions among governments in the group, this is alliance with civil society must be moved from potential to as soon as possible. It will not be easy of course. Progressive civil society groupings may be comfortable dealing with the Brazilian government headed by the Workers’ Party, but they will be ill at ease with the Indian government, which is fundamentalist and neo-liberal or free-market oriented, and with the Chinese government, which is authoritarian and tilting towards neo-liberalism. Nevertheless, alliances are forged in practice and no government must be automatically categorised as impossible to win over to the side of people-oriented sustainable development.

To conclude, shortly after the Doha Ministerial, a number of civil society organisations said that the interests of the developing world would be best served by derailing the coming ministerial in Cancun instead of trying to convert the ministerial into a forum for reforming the WTO. As Cancun approached, the intransigence of the powerful countries stalemated discussions with the South on almost all fronts. By the time Cancun came around, there was no more talk of reform. Things had become crystal clear. With the EU and US determined to get their way, no agreement was better than a bad agreement, a failed ministerial was better than a successful one that merely served as one more nail in the coffin of underdevelopment.

After Cancun, the challenge for global civil society is to redouble its efforts to dismantle the structures of inequality and to push for alternative arrangements of global economic cooperation that would truly advance the interests of the poor, the marginalised, and the disempowered.

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6. ‘Free to be Australian’ Public Meeting: Sydney, 6 October

Campaigning for the removal of Australian cultural industries from the AUS FTA.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance will be holding a rally at the Studio at Sydney Opera House on Monday 6 October at 11am to support culture being removed from the USFTA. Confirmed speakers so far include Geoff Morell, Simon Burke, Margo Kingston and Quentin Dempster.

For further info: Suzanne Culph, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, 0421 802 552

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