The failure of the IMF, World Bank and WTO to represent and further the interests of the developing world, through their one-size-fits-all approach, has lead to the collapse of trade negations, widespread criticism of their effectiveness, and bitter international protest. Many countries are rejecting the neoliberal ideologies of the ‘unholy trinity’ with intensifying calls for their reform or decommissioning.
The
collapse of WTO talks has brought the problems of the international
trade system to the surface. It is now time to overhaul a 'free trade'
system that protects corporate globalisation at the expense of poverty
eradication and sustainability, says Myriam Vander Stichele.
The WTO talks
actually collapsed because the US
did not want to make any commitment to cut its massive subsidies to cotton growers
– regardless of pushing cotton farmers in developing countries further into
penury, writes Devinder Sharma.
As we rapidly move away
from a unipolar or bipolar world towards multiple centres of economic
and political powers, the WTO - with liberalisation at its core - is at a crossroads, writes Aileen Kwa.
After Doha, the WTO is now in a worse position than
before, with the prospect that it will evolve like the old League of
Nations in the 1930’s: present but powerless, argue Walden Bello and Mary Lou Malig.
The collapsed Doha Round has staved off a further import surge into the developing world - which would have been no less devastating than the trail
of human destruction left behind by a powerful tsunami, argues Devinder Sharma.
Liberalisation in world trade over
recent decades has brought prosperity only to a minority of the
world population, and without firmer guarantees many countries
began to agree with the view that "no deal is better than a bad deal", writes David Loyn.