Noam Chomsky- What's the WTO?

the World Trade Organization replaces an earlier Organization GATT the world trade organization came into being through a several rounds of negotiations Uruguay round was the one that founded it and it's an organization of States in theory and practice it's an organization run by the richer and more powerful state and the multinational corporations that are closely linked to them and it's the arrangements of the Uruguay Round we're set up there I'm kind of a mixture of liberalisation and protectionism carefully crafted to ensure the wealth and power of them were privileged sectors that basically run it so they're many strongly protectionist elements and there are other liberalizing elements and they're crafted in the interests of the founders and you can see it by say comparing what say comparing the rules that were set up in the GATT system so the United States is obviously the most powerful by far so back in the 1950s the US insisted on various protectionist devices for agriculture and textiles and so on right now it happens that the US is in a position where its own agribusiness biotechnology will gain at the cost of others if those barriers are reduced so therefore the World Trade Organization changes the system so as to favor liberalisation of say genetically engineered foods and so on because that's in the interests of US producers thirty years ago the other way around the multiplied our agreement which is a highly protectionist the element that blocks production from the poor countries through tariffs that states I mean theoretically it's going to disappear sometime but it stays however the most extreme protectionist element that was introduced again at the insistence of the United States and agreement of the other rich countries is what's called intellectual property rights which is a not only highly protectionist but is designed to prevent development and innovation to ensure that that the technology of the future in pharmaceuticals software etc will remain in the hands of the huge publicly subsidized corporate systems of the West primarily the US but others too instead of being freely available and various measures were introduced to which are as I say not only highly protectionist but designed to prevent growth and development so for example the institution of what are called product patents instead of process patents is quite significant that means that if say you know merck pharmaceutical developed some technique to produce a drug under press it you can you could under the earlier regime product a patent process but if somebody figured out a smarter way to make it you couldn't patent product they could make it that smarter way suppose say in the Brazil or somewhere they figured out a cheaper way to make it they could do it now that's block two in an effort to prevent progress and development but to increase profits through protectionist measures this is now having a big issue primarily because of things like you know the AIDS epidemic in Africa you know the spread of malaria and other things all the drugs are priced out of sight because they're not being sold at market prices they're being sold that highly inflated prices due to the monopolistic protectionist measures introduced through the World Trade Organization arrangements and there are many things of this kind whether the other crucial aspect of the Uruguay Round is that it extends further something has been going on for some time and that is the transfer of Rights nothing alrights in fact away from people and into the hands of corporate corporate entities honest Oh early in this century corporations were by judicial activism granted not legislation granted the rights of persons so they became persons of course they're not persons there are collectivist entities there actually did private tyrannies as with the amount through but they were given the rights of persons it's a great attack on classical liberalism on the theory that rights in here in people but now these new arrangements extended so under the World Trade Organization rules and not only then corporations have rights way beyond people for example you and I don't have the right to say sue Canada if Canada is doing something we don't like but the ethyl corporation has the right to sue Canada if Canada's blocking distribution of some probably carcinogenic additive that they're producing and similarly all sorts of such arrangements and these conflicts if they come to arbitration under World Trade Organization rules the arbitration is designed so that corporations always win in effect I mean say that but that's what it comes down to the arbitration is not a judicial proceeding it's not public there's no adversary proceedings nothing like that it's a secret proceeding carried out by we're called trade experts I mean guess who they are and they come down with a ruling and you can predict what the ruling is going to be in theirs case after case where it works the way it predict the idea is to eliminate the democratic right of people to decide what you know they want to eat or what they want to breathe or what kind of country they want to live in or whatever and to transfer that right into the hands of the private tyrannies investors lenders and so on banks but under the guise that this protects trade now you know trade may be good or may be bad but it's not a fundamental value it's not a fundamental human right to have international trade by General Motors maybe it's good it's bad to elevate it to the rank of Rights as Ludacris it's whether it's good or bad as an instrumental question question is how does it affect people and that turns out to be pretty complicated but if it's raised above all other values in this highly nuanced way so sometimes protectionism is insist on protectionism sometimes insist on freedom investment freedom of capital flow of all depending on who benefits No then of course it's a major attack and intended as a major attack on human rights on democracy and the rights of people's to decide what they want so for example if Europeans decide let's say we don't want to be experimental subjects they don't have that right anymore so for example suppose that the you know biology department at MIT told you you're going to be an experimental subject we want to fill around with your brain or something supposedly you're supposed to have the right to say well I'm sorry I don't want to be an experimental subject but the World Trade Organization rules are designed so you don't have that right so for example if Europeans decide look we don't want to be experimental subjects with genetically modified foods because just too much uncertainty nobody knows what's going to happen and we don't want to be experimental subjects we would like to make our own decision well that is a right that's taken away under these rules the the corporate Monsanto for example can bring case to the World Trade Organization and claim interference with their you know their divine right to invest in trade freely and that goes to a secret panel which of course decides in favor of the corporations now you know then the u.s. is permitted to retaliate that's the way it works and that's supposed to show that everybody is equal so for example if if you know hey T let's say brings a case against the United States for dumping chicken parts in Haiti and destroying the chicken parts industry as the US does in fact and it destroys it they can bring a case they can use a D dumping rules to prevent the United States from doing this and they can to punish the United States for example they can close off the Haitian market which will really hurt the United States badly and the United States can do the same to them well okay we know how that's going to come out so the US can impose penalties on Europe and it can impose penalties on Haiti and you know Kenya they can do it back to us but this isn't even a joke beyond this last point about this the the new the evolving rules which are in the World Trade Organization and other arrangements give corporations what are called the right of national treatment meaning if General Motors operates in Mexico they have to be treated like a Mexican business on the other hand that's a right that human beings so if a Mexican comes to New York and says I'd like to have national treatment don't have to say what will happen it's another respect in which the system is designed so that human rights are marginalized in favor of the rights of private their own ease within a complicated way and say only one might ask why this whole organization is needed at all is it doing anything that cat wasn't doing I mean during the GAT period which is since second world war in the 1950s in the 1960s a trade growth increased fast in fact it increased faster than it's been increasing in the last 20 years and that was just a different arrangement again of the powerful states but not this one there's no particular reason to believe this was needed for anything except to ensure and enhance the rights of the designers the rights and power with designers and ways of the kinds of adventure I'm in the linkage between the powerful States and the wealthy corporate structures is very tight in all sorts of ways and state power is sinhala specially in last 30 years has been designed in order to extend the to diminish the rights of people and to extend the rights of private power it's done in lots of ways I mean for example liberalisation of capital flow which is maybe the most important decision of the last 50 years in international affairs in the early 1970s a primarily through us initiative but other major powers came along there was a breakdown that the Bretton Woods system the post-war and international economic order was essentially dismantled that order was crucially based on the right of states to control capital flow in and out and relatively fixed exchange rate so you don't have speculation against currencies that was dismantled there are a lot of reasons for it but in any event it was a decision to dismantle it it wasn't a law of nature and as it was dismantled it had the expected effects the the 1:1 effect was that it slowed down well it was correlated with I should say nobody understands the International economy enough to be able to use cause-effect terminology or you can talk about is what happened so there's no good models of financial markets and so on but what happened was as was predicted in fact by the founders of Bretton Woods around the 40s that it slowed down growth productivity increased inequality slowed wages down and so on it had these general negative macroeconomic karlitz and probably consequences but the other effect was not even in question the founders of Bretton Woods is at that time the US and Britain recognized clearly that free capital flow would undermine democracy and that's almost trivial if if investors and banks and so on can move capital in and out of a country freely without constraints they can set policy they basically determine policy there what's sometimes called a virtual Parliament like they don't if a country's some countries trying to say stimulate its economy or to carry out what investors regard as irrational policies like say improving health or education or something like that protecting the environment well you can punish them just defund the country now drive up interest rates by pulling out money which will slow down the economy and lead to recession and in effect terminate the policies so allowing free cap it was well understood in the 1940s this is perfectly explicit in the planning for Britain woods nothing you know making it up it was understood and it's kind of obvious that unless a country can control its own its own capital basically with constraints on export of capital with decisions about you know under what conditions people can invest you know that I have to have local privileges for say you know particular areas where you want to invest or for minorities or women or something like that unless you have such constraints the decision on how your country will run will be in the hands of concentrations of international capital not in the hands of its own population so it's a weapon against democracy the at the time in the 1940s there was just overwhelming popular support around the world for including the United States for essentially social democratic policies what we call a welfare state and also policies designed to government policies designed for the welfare of the population there was enormous popular support for that and in fact even more radical alternatives like dismantling private ownership and there was a lot of fear about that and the Bretton Woods system was designed to protect those rights sometimes called embedded liberalism liberalism meaning free trade but embedded and so what we call out welfare state measures or social democratic measures and of course ever since then the business world and its and the governments which are close to it have been trying to dismantle that system naturally and they've been doing it in all sorts of ways but the elimination of the constraints on the liberalisation of capital flow was a big change and it had the predicted effect you can see it all over the world you know from the United States Britain Germany Sweden third world it's just a disaster the welfare state measures are declining in the interests of concentration of wealth in the United States a pretty clear case we always a very limited welfare state by international standards like it's the only industrial country with no health care system for example but it had you know the word measures kind of New Deal style measures and they increased in the 60s but since the early seventies they're being taken apart to a large extent some people are fighting for them and maintaining a lot of them but they're considerably weakened and you can even see it in just wages so for example for the majority of the population wages have either stagnated or declined since the early seventies of what wealth has been produced is much more highly concentrated than in the past and a lot of its kind of shaky its stock market inflation asset inflation but these are and these they're similar effects throughout most of the world for again for the third world it's can be catastrophic and often is and those are the natural expected anticipated and certainly planned effects not too surprising to see them happen the World Trade Organization is part of this much more general system as its design is to exalt freak the right to invest and to trade as the most supreme human value but carefully nuanced so they're strong protectionist elements and this word innate everything else to that well no no wonder that huge number of people around the world don't like you can't take global polls but probably the majority in places where you can take polls it's the majority of the population is opposed for good reasons good organization and education but the population has been opposed all along it takes a NAFTA when the doesn't the intent was in 1992 to ram NAFTA through in secret the signal a signing of the of the treaty by the three presidents got virtually no no by the three executives got no no publicity but it's kind of broke into the public arena briefly and then came a huge propaganda campaign to try to convince people to be in favor of it and normos all the media were like a probably 100 percent in favor close to it a no-brainer I mean economic models proving a Marvel it's going to be a massive campaign interesting effect is it didn't change people's minds at the time of the NAFTA vote population still opposed they know why for the most part because there was no discussion or you know in fact the with one of the most striking things is that the position of organized labor was never allowed was never made public I mean labor did have a position an official position it was never public affected this day has been made rather they were kind of denounced as you know crude vulgar nationalists with the bullying tactics and so on denounced from what's called the left like people like Anthony Lewis in the New York Times but their actual position was never made public and their actual position was quite constructive and fit makes sense to go back and read it but it never reached the public they never heard about in fact even maybe even more remarkable in a way Congress Congress had it since been killed but it had a in independent research bureau the office of Technology Assessment and they had an analysis of NAFTA which was very critical they predicted that it would be harmful to the populations of the three countries and suggested a redesign in ways which would be beneficial not just to investors but also to people and in fact their position was very much like the labor position but that was suppressed too as far as I know it still hasn't been made public but despite the attempt to conceal the to suppress the any debate or discussion and to and to keep people basically in the dark even if major not knowing major positions nevertheless public opposition continued and it was still a majority at the time of NAFTA same in Canada Mexico's dictatorship so you can't really be sure what public opinion was but there were large-scale protests not just of the general population but you know business protested because middle sized businesses recognize they're gonna get wiped out and so on very little of that was ever reported here so it was true of NAFTA and it's been true of every trade agreement since when it must have been what fall of 97 I guess when they tried to ram through fast-track again it was like close to a hundred percent support elite support media you know business and so on but they could not get it through and the reason they couldn't get it through was described sort of ruefully by the Wall Street Journal it was for strongly in favor of they said that the opponents of fast-track have what they called an ultimate weapon namely the populations opposed and we haven't quite figured out how to deal with that PR problem so the you know people were banging on the doors of their local representatives and demanding they vote against it and finally it was voted down even by people in Congress who were in favor of it because of constituent pressure without any anything much of an articulate voice and the same thing happened shortly after with multilateral agreement on investments it was intended to be kept secret it was negotiated for several years in virtual secrecy I wasn't really secret so the business world knew all about it and was publishing monographs and so on the newsroom certainly knew about it but it was virtually nothing published I actually did a review of the media in several countries and you know amazing how much how the discipline how tight the discipline was finally China broke through first in Canada through the internet and other ways and there was large the Sun has got known at all within months it was a very substantial protest grassroots organizations and activists and so on and they forced the OECD to back down on it I'm the OECD that roughly thirty richest countries in the world and the major corporations and the media and so on that's a huge concentration of power and nothing like it in world history but they had to back down in the face of grassroots activism and organization well that was 1998 no it's year before Seattle so this shouldn't come as a big surprise I mean what happened was that there was enough very effective organization and educational programs and so on so that people were out there in the streets but it's a further development of the same very natural phenomena reflection of the opposition to the dismantling of democratic structures and the attack on human rights and so on has to be done is to build on I mean the corporate power and state power isn't going to go away is going to home they're going to continue trying to implement the same decisions and the NAFTA the Seattle protests did bring together a very very dramatically a wide range of constituencies international domestic and so on which have rarely had to do anything with one of them that anything to do with one another before if that can be used as a basis for constructing a really powerful international popular movement of many coming from many different parts of society that can really be a way of changing a lot of things not just the WTO but lots of more fundamental things you

Channel: TheEthanwashere

Views: 91,859

Rating: 4.848721 out of 5

Keywords: Noam Chomsky (Film Actor)

Id: ncXaa57mmRU

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 10 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/MostlyOffensive]

Does anyone have a transcript of this?