Free trade is a misnomer. Monopoly patents are not free trade; they’re trying to convert all sorts of natural knowledge into intellectual property, 20-year patents. That’s not free trade. And the rest of it is managed trade. True free trade would take only one page for a trade agreement. How come there are hundreds of pages, and thousands of regulations? It’s corporate-managed trade.
Q: What are your observations on the demonstrations at the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle? Do you think they might be a spark for a new movement for social change?
A: I think they have been. They’ve gone back from Seattle to have meetings in church basements and union halls, [and the issue is now in] the global media’s attention. Corporate globalization, the corporate model of economic development, the autocratic systems of governance embedded in the WTO, which subvert our legitimate local, state and national sovereignties, imperil our existing health and safety laws, should they be superior to those of other countries who are exporting to us and say that they’re trade barriers and take us to tribunals in Geneva which are secret kangaroo-type courts and beat us there, because the mandate of GATT and now the WTO is trade Uber alles. Trade subordinates all over consumer, environmental, health, safety and workplace standards.
In the WTO], environmental, consumer and workplace health and safety regulations have to prove they are “least trade restrictive.” What that omnipresent phrase means is that one country can challenge another country’s safety laws or standards for allegedly obstructing imports. So far these cases brought before the WTO’s secret tribunals usually have been decided against health and safety under the tribunal judges’ yardstick of “trade uber alles.”
Q: There must be firms or forces in society that you have decided now are more malignant than you thought 25 years ago, and companies on the other hand that actually have improved and are behaving better. There must have been some changes.
A: With the collapse of communism and with the absence of any alternative way of ordering private property and using public assets, we’re entering into a generation of global power of the multi-national corporations. There’s no society that’s able to withstand commercial western culture. Perhaps fundamentalism and Islam is trying to do it.... But that’s going to be the challenge now, whether democracy is going to be up to it. Whether these giant corporations are going to be able to respect instead of erode and control democratic processes and these new trade agreements like GATT and the World Trade Organization are not encouraging.
--Ralph Nader |
