Rethinking Trade - Season 1 Episode 42: MC12, Part 1: Danger and Opportunity at the 12th WTO Ministerial

 

LINKS:

MC12 Global Call to Action

3 Million TRIPS Petitions Delivered to President Biden

Senators Sanders, Warren, Baldwin and Brown call on Biden to Push for TRIPS Waiver at MC12

Reuters: Activists Urge Biden to Push for Intellectual Property Waiver for COVID-19 Vaccines

Big Tech’s “Digital Trade” Trojan Horse Strategy

--

Music: Groove Grove by Kevin MacLeod.

 

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3831-groove-grove.

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcribed by Sally King

Ryan 

Welcome back to Rethinking Trade where we don't just talk about trade policy, we fight to change it. I'm Ryan and I'm joined once again by our in house trade expert, Lori Wallach. Last week, we discussed US Trade Representative Katherine Tai's recent comments on the World Trade Organization and the need for some big changes to take place there. Well, the WTO is having its 12th ministerial at the end of the month in Geneva, Switzerland. And there will or will not be some big things on the agenda. Lori, why don't you tell us first what a WTO ministerial is what happens there and why you appreciate that this specific one is scheduled to start on November 30, of all dates.

Lori Wallach 

So the WTO, the World Trade Organization, that global commerce body that replaced the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, has a governing structure that involves a typically every two years big confab of the trade ministers, the politically appointed people. So in the US, it's the United States trade representative who's currently Katherine Tai. The actual part of the government, not the career staff, the professional staff who go between governments but the political people come together at a WTO ministerial. And in what is called the Marrakesh agreement, which established the WTO in 1995. The governing rules are set such that this Ministerial Conference, because that's what's officially called the Ministerial Conference. And this is the 12th one. So shorthand will be MC 12 is when the forward agenda of the organization is determined for the next several years, where important decisions are made the really high-level political decisions are made. And it's auspicious that it happens to be on N30 November 30. Because the mother of all WTO ministerial was probably was the one in Seattle in 1999. And the call to action for what became a huge protest that shut down that ministerial and in partnership with a lot of developing country negotiators on the inside saying no-way no-how to WTO expansion ended up derailing. What was planned to be a huge increase in the WTO is corporate rigging and powers meddling behind borders and non-trade stuff. So the action alert that year that Public Citizen sent out the beginning of online organizing was mark the day N30.  Exclamation point. And N30 has become a really rallying cry for global justice, trade justice activist because that was a day activism really changed the world at the WTO.

Ryan 

And so this episode is our precursor to the 12th WTO ministerial. So we're going to talk about a few of the major items. The elephant in the room is of course, the trips waiver. And the fact that this ministerial is happening at a time when many countries in the Global South have yet to break out of single figure vaccination rates, due in part to monopolies on COVID drugs. Lori remind our listeners what the trips waiver is, and what's at stake for it at this ministerial. And then maybe what are some of the things to look out for in terms of the outcomes? .

Lori Wallach 

So TRIPS is trade related intellectual property, it's one of the agreements that got hatched with the WTO. Before this WTO took over from the GATT the trade agreement, the global trade agreement dealt with trade. Instead, with the WTO, a lot of different corporate interests rigged all kinds of rules that basically got them new rights and privileges, and that constrain governments from acting in the public interest. And probably exhibit number one of that is the agreement called TRIPS, which yes, in a Free Trade Agreement requires 20 year monopolies on patents and copyrights and industrial designs. And the pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical corporations were mainly behind doing this because what they ended up doing is imposing worldwide obligations and every government that's in the WTO that you had to have these big long monopolies. And a lot of developing countries didn't, the US didn't have that kind of monopoly intellectual property protection system. Until we were very much developed country, we were basically borrowing technology from Europe. And so this sort of imposition of one size fits all rules, the TRIPS agreements is seen as one of the most nefarious because, you know, covers medicine. It covers seeds. So it's like, are you going to live and die or you're going to eat. And the TRIPS Agreement waiver is a proposal put forward initially by South African India that now has almost 70 official written co-sponsors, 100 countries supporting a waiver of the WTO trips, agreement monopoly rules, because those rules guaranteeing pharmaceutical corporations have monopoly control over how much COVID vaccines are made, and where they can be sold, how much of the new treatments that are, couldn't save lives are going to be made how much of the tests in this kind of incredible global pandemic disaster. This is when you use what is called the waiver mechanism. So when the WTO was hatched, it has what's called the Article Nine, that's the Roman numbers, so IX, that's Article Nine of the agreement, establishing the WTO allows for waivers of any WTO rule. So South African India basically said, "We're facing this catastrophe, we have to make sure we can get enough vaccines and treatments and we have to do it right away. And there are a lot of qualified producers. Let's have a temporary waiver of these rules until we get the COVID pandemic under control." The US came out in support of it Joe Biden reverse Donald Trump in May, which is great live other countries saw the US do that there were very few that were against, but the ones that were mainly rich countries, join the US in support of a waiver. And at this moment, we're like a week before the start of the WTO ministerial, the European Union, on behest of Germany is blocking the whole rest of the world and saying,"Nope, we're gonna stand for the pharmaceutical corporations and keep these monopolies." So the TRIPS waiver is a big honkin deal. And it would be obscene. If there wasn't an agreement. After a year since it was introduced. It was first introduced in October of 2020. If there wasn't a deal at this big wig, WTO ministerial, how what would be the reason to have a WTO ministerial except to get the WTO out of the way of stopping the pandemic. And more than 100 countries agree though, way to do that is to waive these monopoly rights that are basically prolonging the pandemic. And making it such that qualified producers cannot be making these medicines to help save lives. Will it happen though? A lot of that's been independent, all the activism, the action, the pressure, the EU is going to have to break their allegiance with pharma enjoying the rest of the world. And the Biden administration is going to have to step up and basically lead to get the EU out of the way and to bring this over the finish line with South Africa and India. It really is the only thing the WTO should be doing this ministerial.

Ryan 

And if you look in the summary of this episode, you'll see some links for the global days of action and some other context in factsheets about the trips waiver campaign. So Lori, if TRIPS, you know if TRIPS is a good example of what Big Pharma can do when they get their hands on trade rules. Let's talk about something we also talked about in a recent episode, which is so called digital trade rules, and how big tech firms are pushing and utilizing trade rules to extend their own monopoly powers. Can you talk about the state of digital trade rules at the WTO and what the big tech firms are pushing for in terms of global trade rules?

Lori Wallach 

So in the department of learning from history, the notion that there would be a trips waiver at this ministerial after in that famous infamous one in 1999 in Seattle, there wasn't a waiver then for medicine for HIV AIDS. And millions of people in Africa died. Thanks the two year delay until finally some action was taken in 2001 at the WTO. Well, in that same horrible category of not learning. It turns out that what Big Pharma pulled off monopoly protections in the so called free trade agreements. Right now big tech is trying to take page right out of Big Pharma has handbook and as we've discussed on this podcast before, they have branded as quote unquote, digital trade, basically a set of handcuffs, policy-handcuffs, they want to put on governments not to regulate against big tech abuses. And they have a bunch of rules are sort of anti anti trust, which is to say pro monopoly rules. So all the things that big tech is doing to abuse us as consumers, our privacy, us as human beings, all the algorithm discrimination, online surveillance, as well all of the ways in which they are directly hurting people, sales of unfair products, abusive working conditions, or the outrageous gig economy abuses. All of that stuff, governments around the world, some much more advanced than the US in this work have been creating policies to try and break up those behemoths and to get them to behave. And the US Congress is stepping up right now to do the same. So these firms are desperately trying to use the WTO, to set down rules to make it impossible for that stuff to happen. And so what is happening at this ministerial? To date, the big tech firms have not been able to get an official launch of official WTO negotiations to set up global rules that they want. So they've started sort of a side gig. And that is called the joint statement initiative on e-commerce. Could it be more arcane, so you have no damn idea that you're basically being held up? People in Geneva, talk about an e-commerce JSI sounds totally boring. But what it means is basically letting big tech screw the world. And so these rules are not completed. But the mission that big tech house for this particular ministerial is to sort of get them made kosher, which is to say they want them to be brought into the process, they want them to be officially recognized. And given this is supposed to be a body where the only thing that happens is the thing that the members of the organization, the countries agreed to as sovereign nations, this should not be happening, as countries said no. Yep, the negotiations have gone forward. And there are 80 countries no rump group of 164 WTO countries who've been just on their own like, "Well, we'll just pretend we have the authority. Let's write some rules." And so the big issue is whether this ministerial will issue and kind of a statement that somehow invites out rump operation right into the WTO.

Ryan 

And so Lori, having gone through those two kind of big items, what are some of the other items that are going to be discussed at the WTO that US and other you know, folks in our network coalition partners, we'll be tracking? And then maybe you can just take us out for this episode, because we're gonna have a part two, after the ministerial where we'll be talking about what actually happened.

Lori Wallach 

So some big union federation's like Public Services International have called for this whole ministerial to be postponed. And their logic which makes a lot of sense is if there isn't guaranteed to be a deal waiving the TRIPS, intellectual property barriers, to getting vaccines and treatments against COVID around the world, then why the hell would you even be coming to Geneva at this point, to have a negotiation because all the other things that might be on the agenda are bad news for working people, for consumers, for the planet. And amongst those other bad news, things besides the digital trade, so-called digital trade negotiations, are negotiations around what is called, again, seems really benign, but it's not: domestic regulation of services. And what that is about is basically setting up strictures limits, and how the government's though the members of the WTO, almost all the governments in the world 164 countries are not allowed to regulate services. So what's a service? It's everything you can't drop in your foot. So it's education, its retail, its transportation, it is energy, it is a whole set of, you know, sort of office and insurance and banking, and you name it, basically, it's probably a service and was literally physically, it is a product. So limiting regulation on those things has huge implications for climate, for workers, for consumers, for our economy. And this is an effort by a lot of big multinational corporations united together, so big oil, plus Wall Street, plus, plus, plus, they've all gotten together to try and get agreement on those limits. Then there's an agreement on what's called investment facilitation. But that's kind of a sideways way to try and get new foreign investor protections into the WTO. Just at the point that around the world, the investor state dispute settlement system ISDS is in ill repute and countries are backing out of it. This is an effort by the mining and oil companies that multinationals that want these rights to try and sneak back ways into putting these rules back in order through the WTO. And then there are some negotiations that aren't happening, which is really outraged a lot of developing countries, including those on food security and development issues. So you understand why some of the big international organizations have said unless it's TRIPS waiver time, this dang thing shouldn't happen at all because nothing else but badness is on the agenda. And that is what we will leave off because in a short matter of two weeks we will be on the other side of this ministerial and we're going to know if the good things happened, if the bad things happened or if it got postponed.

Ryan 

Rethinking Trade is produced by Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. To learn more you can visit Rethinktrade.org. You can also visit Tradewatch.org. Stay tuned for more and thank you for listening.

Rethinking Trade - Season 1 Episode 42: A New U.S. Approach to the WTO?MC12, Part 1: Danger and Opportunity at the 12th WTO Ministerial

Will the WTO get out of the way of global production of COVID-19 vaccines and meds so we can end this pandemic? Whether Big Pharma or humankind will win is the biggest question as the WTO’s major biennial ministerial meeting starts the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.  But Big Tech also has a play…

More than 120 countries support waiving some of the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules that are limiting production of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests. But the European Union, UK and Switzerland are blocking. A waiver won't happen without more leadership from the Biden administration.

With all this as a backdrop, Big Tech corporations are also vying for influence at MC12, urging the body to push so-called “digital trade” proposal that would close domestic policy space on issues of great importance, including gig economy worker protections, discrimination and algorithm transparency, competition policy and anti-trust, corporate liability, and consumer privacy. Big Tech wants the WTO to formalize what have been rump talks in violation of its own rules.

The stakes could not be higher for the WTO or for the world: Failure to enact a waiver will prolong the pandemic, leading to more death, illness, economic hardship, and social and political disruption. And rushing through a “Trojan Horse” set of “digital trade” rules will only further erode democracy worldwide.

LINKS:

MC12 Global Call to Action

3 Million TRIPS Petitions Delivered to President Biden

Senators Sanders, Warren, Baldwin and Brown call on Biden to Push for TRIPS Waiver at MC12

Reuters: Activists Urge Biden to Push for Intellectual Property Waiver for COVID-19 Vaccines

Big Tech’s “Digital Trade” Trojan Horse Strategy

--

Music: Groove Grove by Kevin MacLeod.

 

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3831-groove-grove.

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcribed by Sally King

Ryan 

Welcome back to Rethinking Trade where we don't just talk about trade policy, we fight to change it. I'm Ryan and I'm joined once again by our in house trade expert, Lori Wallach. Last week, we discussed US Trade Representative Katherine Tai's recent comments on the World Trade Organization and the need for some big changes to take place there. Well, the WTO is having its 12th ministerial at the end of the month in Geneva, Switzerland. And there will or will not be some big things on the agenda. Lori, why don't you tell us first what a WTO ministerial is what happens there and why you appreciate that this specific one is scheduled to start on November 30, of all dates.

Lori Wallach 

So the WTO, the World Trade Organization, that global commerce body that replaced the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, has a governing structure that involves a typically every two years big confab of the trade ministers, the politically appointed people. So in the US, it's the United States trade representative who's currently Katherine Tai. The actual part of the government, not the career staff, the professional staff who go between governments but the political people come together at a WTO ministerial. And in what is called the Marrakesh agreement, which established the WTO in 1995. The governing rules are set such that this Ministerial Conference, because that's what's officially called the Ministerial Conference. And this is the 12th one. So shorthand will be MC 12 is when the forward agenda of the organization is determined for the next several years, where important decisions are made the really high-level political decisions are made. And it's auspicious that it happens to be on N30 November 30. Because the mother of all WTO ministerial was probably was the one in Seattle in 1999. And the call to action for what became a huge protest that shut down that ministerial and in partnership with a lot of developing country negotiators on the inside saying no-way no-how to WTO expansion ended up derailing. What was planned to be a huge increase in the WTO is corporate rigging and powers meddling behind borders and non-trade stuff. So the action alert that year that Public Citizen sent out the beginning of online organizing was mark the day N30.  Exclamation point. And N30 has become a really rallying cry for global justice, trade justice activist because that was a day activism really changed the world at the WTO.

Ryan 

And so this episode is our precursor to the 12th WTO ministerial. So we're going to talk about a few of the major items. The elephant in the room is of course, the trips waiver. And the fact that this ministerial is happening at a time when many countries in the Global South have yet to break out of single figure vaccination rates, due in part to monopolies on COVID drugs. Lori remind our listeners what the trips waiver is, and what's at stake for it at this ministerial. And then maybe what are some of the things to look out for in terms of the outcomes? .

Lori Wallach 

So TRIPS is trade related intellectual property, it's one of the agreements that got hatched with the WTO. Before this WTO took over from the GATT the trade agreement, the global trade agreement dealt with trade. Instead, with the WTO, a lot of different corporate interests rigged all kinds of rules that basically got them new rights and privileges, and that constrain governments from acting in the public interest. And probably exhibit number one of that is the agreement called TRIPS, which yes, in a Free Trade Agreement requires 20 year monopolies on patents and copyrights and industrial designs. And the pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical corporations were mainly behind doing this because what they ended up doing is imposing worldwide obligations and every government that's in the WTO that you had to have these big long monopolies. And a lot of developing countries didn't, the US didn't have that kind of monopoly intellectual property protection system. Until we were very much developed country, we were basically borrowing technology from Europe. And so this sort of imposition of one size fits all rules, the TRIPS agreements is seen as one of the most nefarious because, you know, covers medicine. It covers seeds. So it's like, are you going to live and die or you're going to eat. And the TRIPS Agreement waiver is a proposal put forward initially by South African India that now has almost 70 official written co-sponsors, 100 countries supporting a waiver of the WTO trips, agreement monopoly rules, because those rules guaranteeing pharmaceutical corporations have monopoly control over how much COVID vaccines are made, and where they can be sold, how much of the new treatments that are, couldn't save lives are going to be made how much of the tests in this kind of incredible global pandemic disaster. This is when you use what is called the waiver mechanism. So when the WTO was hatched, it has what's called the Article Nine, that's the Roman numbers, so IX, that's Article Nine of the agreement, establishing the WTO allows for waivers of any WTO rule. So South African India basically said, "We're facing this catastrophe, we have to make sure we can get enough vaccines and treatments and we have to do it right away. And there are a lot of qualified producers. Let's have a temporary waiver of these rules until we get the COVID pandemic under control." The US came out in support of it Joe Biden reverse Donald Trump in May, which is great live other countries saw the US do that there were very few that were against, but the ones that were mainly rich countries, join the US in support of a waiver. And at this moment, we're like a week before the start of the WTO ministerial, the European Union, on behest of Germany is blocking the whole rest of the world and saying,"Nope, we're gonna stand for the pharmaceutical corporations and keep these monopolies." So the TRIPS waiver is a big honkin deal. And it would be obscene. If there wasn't an agreement. After a year since it was introduced. It was first introduced in October of 2020. If there wasn't a deal at this big wig, WTO ministerial, how what would be the reason to have a WTO ministerial except to get the WTO out of the way of stopping the pandemic. And more than 100 countries agree though, way to do that is to waive these monopoly rights that are basically prolonging the pandemic. And making it such that qualified producers cannot be making these medicines to help save lives. Will it happen though? A lot of that's been independent, all the activism, the action, the pressure, the EU is going to have to break their allegiance with pharma enjoying the rest of the world. And the Biden administration is going to have to step up and basically lead to get the EU out of the way and to bring this over the finish line with South Africa and India. It really is the only thing the WTO should be doing this ministerial.

Ryan 

And if you look in the summary of this episode, you'll see some links for the global days of action and some other context in factsheets about the trips waiver campaign. So Lori, if TRIPS, you know if TRIPS is a good example of what Big Pharma can do when they get their hands on trade rules. Let's talk about something we also talked about in a recent episode, which is so called digital trade rules, and how big tech firms are pushing and utilizing trade rules to extend their own monopoly powers. Can you talk about the state of digital trade rules at the WTO and what the big tech firms are pushing for in terms of global trade rules?

Lori Wallach 

So in the department of learning from history, the notion that there would be a trips waiver at this ministerial after in that famous infamous one in 1999 in Seattle, there wasn't a waiver then for medicine for HIV AIDS. And millions of people in Africa died. Thanks the two year delay until finally some action was taken in 2001 at the WTO. Well, in that same horrible category of not learning. It turns out that what Big Pharma pulled off monopoly protections in the so called free trade agreements. Right now big tech is trying to take page right out of Big Pharma has handbook and as we've discussed on this podcast before, they have branded as quote unquote, digital trade, basically a set of handcuffs, policy-handcuffs, they want to put on governments not to regulate against big tech abuses. And they have a bunch of rules are sort of anti anti trust, which is to say pro monopoly rules. So all the things that big tech is doing to abuse us as consumers, our privacy, us as human beings, all the algorithm discrimination, online surveillance, as well all of the ways in which they are directly hurting people, sales of unfair products, abusive working conditions, or the outrageous gig economy abuses. All of that stuff, governments around the world, some much more advanced than the US in this work have been creating policies to try and break up those behemoths and to get them to behave. And the US Congress is stepping up right now to do the same. So these firms are desperately trying to use the WTO, to set down rules to make it impossible for that stuff to happen. And so what is happening at this ministerial? To date, the big tech firms have not been able to get an official launch of official WTO negotiations to set up global rules that they want. So they've started sort of a side gig. And that is called the joint statement initiative on e-commerce. Could it be more arcane, so you have no damn idea that you're basically being held up? People in Geneva, talk about an e-commerce JSI sounds totally boring. But what it means is basically letting big tech screw the world. And so these rules are not completed. But the mission that big tech house for this particular ministerial is to sort of get them made kosher, which is to say they want them to be brought into the process, they want them to be officially recognized. And given this is supposed to be a body where the only thing that happens is the thing that the members of the organization, the countries agreed to as sovereign nations, this should not be happening, as countries said no. Yep, the negotiations have gone forward. And there are 80 countries no rump group of 164 WTO countries who've been just on their own like, "Well, we'll just pretend we have the authority. Let's write some rules." And so the big issue is whether this ministerial will issue and kind of a statement that somehow invites out rump operation right into the WTO.

Ryan 

And so Lori, having gone through those two kind of big items, what are some of the other items that are going to be discussed at the WTO that US and other you know, folks in our network coalition partners, we'll be tracking? And then maybe you can just take us out for this episode, because we're gonna have a part two, after the ministerial where we'll be talking about what actually happened.

Lori Wallach 

So some big union federation's like Public Services International have called for this whole ministerial to be postponed. And their logic which makes a lot of sense is if there isn't guaranteed to be a deal waiving the TRIPS, intellectual property barriers, to getting vaccines and treatments against COVID around the world, then why the hell would you even be coming to Geneva at this point, to have a negotiation because all the other things that might be on the agenda are bad news for working people, for consumers, for the planet. And amongst those other bad news, things besides the digital trade, so-called digital trade negotiations, are negotiations around what is called, again, seems really benign, but it's not: domestic regulation of services. And what that is about is basically setting up strictures limits, and how the government's though the members of the WTO, almost all the governments in the world 164 countries are not allowed to regulate services. So what's a service? It's everything you can't drop in your foot. So it's education, its retail, its transportation, it is energy, it is a whole set of, you know, sort of office and insurance and banking, and you name it, basically, it's probably a service and was literally physically, it is a product. So limiting regulation on those things has huge implications for climate, for workers, for consumers, for our economy. And this is an effort by a lot of big multinational corporations united together, so big oil, plus Wall Street, plus, plus, plus, they've all gotten together to try and get agreement on those limits. Then there's an agreement on what's called investment facilitation. But that's kind of a sideways way to try and get new foreign investor protections into the WTO. Just at the point that around the world, the investor state dispute settlement system ISDS is in ill repute and countries are backing out of it. This is an effort by the mining and oil companies that multinationals that want these rights to try and sneak back ways into putting these rules back in order through the WTO. And then there are some negotiations that aren't happening, which is really outraged a lot of developing countries, including those on food security and development issues. So you understand why some of the big international organizations have said unless it's TRIPS waiver time, this dang thing shouldn't happen at all because nothing else but badness is on the agenda. And that is what we will leave off because in a short matter of two weeks we will be on the other side of this ministerial and we're going to know if the good things happened, if the bad things happened or if it got postponed.

Ryan 

Rethinking Trade is produced by Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. To learn more you can visit Rethinktrade.org. You can also visit Tradewatch.org. Stay tuned for more and thank you for listening.

Apple and Google Want U.S. Trade Officials to Attack Anti-Monopoly Law

[Reposted from PC News]

By: Karolina Mackiewicz

Tech giants Google and Apple are urging U.S. government officials to attack a pro-consumer policy by South Korea as an “illegal trade barrier,” even as the U.S. Congress is poised to pass similar legislation to break up app store monopolies.

The new Korean law would require app stores to allow consumers to use diverse payment systems, not only those controlled by the app store’s home platform. And it forbids the platforms from the current practice of banning app developers from listing on multiple platforms’ app stores.

Google and Apple claim that this law, instead of an anti-monopoly initiative that the U.S. Congress is also considering, is somehow an illegal trade barrier and perhaps even a violation of a free trade agreement between the U.S. and Korea. As flimsy as this claim is, it is a preview of coming attractions of the newest and latest corporate sneak attack via trade agreement.

From the translation of the amendments obtained by Public Citizen, it is clear the requirements apply to all app stores, regardless of the “nationality” of the company. In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Public Citizen experts conclude that the amendments are not discriminatory. Such measures are typical of antitrust laws and competition policies around the world. The fact that the Korean policy could particularly affect American businesses is due exclusively to those businesses’ dominant market position, not because Korea is discriminating against U.S. firms, much less violating trade obligations.

“If the U.S. starts this fight on a nondiscriminatory policy because some U.S. companies don’t like it, then when we have a regulation here that impacts some other country’s platform that is neutral, but it happens to impact them because they’re a big player in the U.S., then that country will come after us,” said Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach in the latest episode of the Rethinking Trade podcast. “It creates a circular firing squad attacking consumer policies so the only winners are a handful of mega big tech platforms.”

Public Citizen urged U.S. trade officials to refrain from criticizing the Korean law and to beware of Big Tech’s larger strategy to avert digital governance.

Big Tech interests’ latest ploy is to hijack trade negotiating venues to lock in binding international rules that limit governments from regulating online platforms in the public interest and from fighting corporate concentration and monopoly power. These interests seek to quicky establish international agreements that quietly undermine regulatory efforts in Congress and U.S. agencies. To obscure this, they have misbranded their attack against the very notion of digital governance as “e-commerce” or “digital trade” policy initiatives.

This is a multi-front effort that includes what is formally called the World Trade Organization (WTO) “Joint Statement Initiative on E-Commerce” negotiations now underway in Geneva among 80-plus countries, a plurilateral Pacific Rim “Digital Economic Partnership Agreement” (DEPA) and various bilateral negotiations.

The Big Tech strategy replicates pharmaceutical firms’ 1990s maneuver of hijacking “free trade” agreements and inserting provisions that require signatory countries to provide the corporations extended monopoly protections and limit policies that lower drug prices.

“These corporate-rigged international agreements end up becoming Trojan horse platforms, where non-trade agendas that are not able to get through the sunshine of public debate and voting in legislative bodies end up getting implemented through the backdoor of a so-called trade deal,” said Wallach.

Rethinking Trade - Season 1 Episode 41: A New U.S. Approach to the WTO?

U.S. Trade Representative, Katherine Tai’s recent speech about the World Trade Organization was shocking. Why? Because she openly and frankly discussed the yawning gap between the WTO’s expansive rules and what is right and good for people and the planet. And she made clear that the rules of the global commerce agency need a major redo.

That sort of tough love may be the last chance for the WTO, which has suffered a deepening legitimacy crisis for decades. Today WTO intellectual property barriers empower a few pharmaceutical corporations to limit how much vaccine is made, prolonging the pandemic.

In this episode we unpack USTR Tai’s recent comments and what they mean for the future of the WTO.

Learn more: www.tradewatch.org

--

Music: Groove Grove by Kevin MacLeod.

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3831-groove-grove.

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcribed by Sally King

 

Ryan 

Welcome back to Rethinking Trade where we don't just talk about trade policy, we fight to change it. I'm Ryan and I'm joined once again by our in-house trade expert, Lori Wallach. Today, we're going to be talking about a recent speech from United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai about US trade policy and the World Trade Organization. Lori before we get too far into the show, maybe you can just summarize for our listeners, what the WTO is, and a bit about the history of calls for significant changes to be made at the WTO.

Lori Wallach 

So the WTO is the World Trade Organization. And it is a body that replaced a thing called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was the post World War II body that basically set the rules of border taxes, tariffs and quotas, how much stuff that come in. Unlike the old GATT, the general agreement, tariffs and trade the WTO broke all the boundaries of what has ever been in a trade agreement and imposed one size fits all on the whole world obligations that countries owe to corporations like extended monopoly protections for pharmaceutical corporations, which right now is making the WTO an obstacle to ending the pandemic, or requirements that you can't regulate service sector companies healthcare or transportation, or banks, for instance, how big they are, or whether they are protecting consumers. And it's set up rules that even set limits and how we can spend our tax dollars as governments. Really invasive and behind the borders policymaking. And the key requirements of the WTO is a provision that requires all signatory countries to, "ensure compliance of domestic laws, regulations, and administrative procedures," with all of the WTO is non-trade rules, so it basically sets a ceiling imposed by corporations and what our democratically elected governments can do on a whole bunch of stuff unrelated to trade. The WTO has been suffering from a crisis of legitimacy almost from when it was hatched because its very establishment was opposed by many of the developing countries that are members of it. And the US and European Union basically cooked a deal. And it came into effect in 1995, replacing the old GATT, and ever since there have been efforts by the corporate world and by some governments to expand its powers even more. And people famously remember the Battle in Seattle, the 1999 WTO ministerial in Seattle, where basically the developing countries stood up and said, " No. We are not expanding this further. We need to fix the existing rules." The WTO has never really recovered from its crisis of legitimacy. And then over the last 10 years or so it's dispute panels because it strongly enforces all these extreme rules. Its dispute panels started pushing out even further and further and kind of making up new laws given the negotiations were jammed, until ultimately, first the Obama administration then the Trump administration said this crap has to stop. And ultimately the Trump administration basically put that enforcement system out of business by not appointing new judges. And at this big speech on the WTO just recently, the new US Trade Representative Katherine Tai for the binding ministration basically said, yeah, big reforms are needed before we want this thing back in operation.

Ryan 

So I just wanted to play a quote from that speech, Lori from USTR Tai's, recent speech at the Graduate Institute, the Geneva trade platform, and then I was hoping to get your thoughts on it. Here's the quote.

USTR Kathrine Tai 

"For some time, there's been a growing sense that the conversations in places like Geneva are not grounded in the lived experiences of working people. For years, we have seen protests outside WTO ministerial conferences, about issues like workers' rights, job loss, environmental degradation, and climate change, as tensions around globalization have increased. We all know that trade is essential to a functioning global economy. But we must ask ourselves, how do we improve trade rules to protect our planet and address widening inequality and increasing economic insecurity? Today I want to discuss the United States vision for how we can work together to make the WTO relevant to the needs of regular people."

Ryan 

Lori, how significant is this quote coming from the United States Trade Representative? And what does it say about the potential future of US trade policy?

Lori Wallach 

It's a really big deal. And the reason it's so significant coming from the US is historically things like that might have been said from activists from scholars like Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, from developing countries. But it's a really strong leadership development to have the US Trade Representative admitting that there are problems and in fact leading that there are problems, and then committing to try and do something about it. It's amazing.

Ryan 

I also I just want to play another quote as well. This one is maybe a little bit more in the weeds. Here's the quote:

USTR Kathrine Tai 

"Over the past quarter-century, WTO members have also discovered that they can get around the hard part of diplomacy and negotiation by securing new rules through litigation. Dispute Settlement was never intended to supplant negotiations. The reform of these two core WTO functions is intimately linked."

Ryan 

Can you speak a bit about this dispute settlement mess at the WTO? And what reforming it could look like?

Lori Wallach 

So this is the thing I was talking about, where because the agenda at negotiations is always more WTO power for corporations to set the rules on non-trade stuff, the negotiating agenda is just broken down. And so these tribunals who are the enforcement tribunals who can impose huge billion-dollar sanctions for countries to get nailed by trade sanctions unless and until they change their domestic laws to meet these WTO dictates. That system has been put out of business for three years because the US refused to appoint more appellate body judges. So they don't have a quorum, so they can't literally impose these sanctions. And what USTR Tai said, basically, was that because the way that the WTO enforcement system has played out a lot of countries instead of talking to each other at the WTO, or trying to negotiate settlements that are mutually agreeable, have started to basically try and use the litigation, the enforcement system to get their way. And that's not what it was supposed to be about. And that's actually something both sort of defenders of the current WTO rules will say, and those who think that they need to be majorly replaced. So the reform that she's talking about basically is linking both pieces, which is that the actual enforcement mechanism, the dispute settlement system needs major redo. But also she's making the exactly spot on right point, that the substantive rules also need to be updated, replaced, fixed, and that you're not going to end up with one without the other. No one wants to see strong enforcement of bad rules. If there isn't a way for countries to talk to each other and resolve their issues diplomatically, then you're not going to have successful negotiations to get the rules that deserve strong enforcement. So it is exactly the right way to be thinking about what the WTO fix agenda needs to be. And a lot of civil society groups have been taking sort of, I would say, you know, more robust, even wider position on that for some time. They talk about they don't want a new round of WTO expansion, but they want to turn around fixes to the existing rules. So again, it's super powerful that you have a US leading trade official, basically saying that both the process of enforcement and the underlying rules need to be reviewed. And I think she probably say fixed or reformed, civil society would say replaced, but at least everyone's heading the same direction, which has not been the case for the US. Typically US is going in one direction and civil society is going to another. So it's pretty hopeful and a lot of work to do but pretty hopeful that that's the perspective.

Ryan 

And Lori, what did USTR Tai say in this recent speech regarding the WTO TRIPS waiver, which our listeners are probably familiar with at this point, is there any movement on the waiver either at the WTO or from the USTR office?

Lori Wallach 

Well, this is kind of a catch-22. Because at this point, the whole world is looking at the WTO and is seeing it as an obstacle to ending the pandemic. The WTO is, again, not about trade, intellectual property rules are reaching behind borders requiring 164 WTO members to guarantee monopoly control by a handful of pharmaceutical companies over how much and where vaccines for COVID-19 treatments, diagnostic tests are made, and where they're sold. And that is obviously fueling the continuing outbreaks needless deaths, economic chaos, we're just no place close, we just have an absolute shortage in the supply. The current vaccine makers and their monopolies will not deliver what the world needs. And until these WTO rules get out of the way, the whole world that's looking at this is right, the WTO is an obstacle. It's not only not part of the solution of one of the biggest challenges facing humanity, it is basically at this moment, the biggest obstacle. So with that in mind, actually, the speech did not focus on, in a sort of pragmatic sense, how the WTO is intellectual property barriers are going to be gotten out of the way. But if they're not, that could be sort of the final nail on WTO his coffin. I mean, the organization is sort of hanging by thread. Its negotiating system has failed to work forever. The member countries are in deep disagreement about what the substance of the role should be. But clearly, they're extremely outdated and have become an obstacle not just to stopping the pandemic, but to surviving climate crisis, etc. And in the face of an existing near-fatal legitimacy crisis. If the WTO after a year, because it was October 2020, that countries proposed temporarily waiving these WTO corporate pharmaceutical monopoly rules. If the WTO can't even get out of the way of this huge pandemic counter fight, basically, its lash read of potential usefulness or legitimacy could just be totally trashed. So institutionally, the WTO needs to deliver a waiver. And USTR Tai's speech basically said, there needs to be more work, we need to have an outcome. But you know, it's not looking super auspicious. I mean, we were one month out of the WTO ministerial, which certainly isn't you don't have to go to a ministerial to do this waiver of the WTO, Trade Related Intellectual Property or TRIPS rules, you can do that at any meeting of the general basically body, which is called the General Council. But this ministerial was certainly was the far out deadline that the head of the WTO, the director-general set by which this ought to get done. And it's, you know, it's not getting done. It's in part, because the European Union on behalf of Germany is blocking it. But also the US has a very strong hand to play, that has not been played to lead forward, I think the EU would get out of the way. Because at this point, there are 130 countries that support a waiver. And you have a handful of countries that oppose: Germany, the UK, Switzerland, and they've got a couple that are just missing an action. So I think between now and the November 30, meeting of the WTO Ministerial Conference, part of the fate of the WTO is going to be sealed. And to the extent that the Biden administration is key in getting these changes done, I think we all need to be focused on how we can help make sure it happens. And part of that certainly is talking to members of Congress if you run into them, because I think a lot of them want to see this done and they can speak to the administration. But also, you know, it is talking to your friends and your family about why we don't have enough vaccines worldwide why the next variant can come kick our ass, and that is because of WTO rules, and it's fixable, but we're gonna need to organize to fix it.

Ryan 

Rethinking Trade is produced by Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. To learn more you can visit rethinktrade.org. You can also visit tradewatch.org. Stay tuned for more and thank you for listening.