The World Trading Organization (WTO) meeting that took place in Hong Kong last December, concluded with a publicized agreement to eliminate benefits for their agricultural producers… in 2013; something that was left dependent upon new meetings to be held in the future. The capitalist press considered, almost unanimously, that the agreement was a “small” or “modest” step forward, but celebrated it as a kind of a way out. In the previous meeting in Cancun, Mexico, two years ago, the representatives of several countries had withdrawn without even signing anything in writing. The quagmire goes back to Seattle, 1998, when the WTO split due to divergences and was hit by a huge demonstration of the masses. It seems that an exception to so many frustrated summits was desired: the European Union leaders ended their last year’s summit in a fist fight; another ecumenical meeting of leaders of European and Arab countries ended with no results later on in Spain, at the so called “Mediterranean Summit”; almost at the same time, a general failure accompanied the “Americas’ Summit” in Mar del Plata, too.
What is all this about?
The elimination of the frequently mentioned “agricultural benefits” is presented time and again as an old and historic claim of the “Southern countries” that would like to see the “Northern markets” “unblocked” in this way, to the sale of their products. But what the “Southern countries” present as “national interests” are business deals for the bourgeoisies and the oligarchic land owners, as well as for the giant corporations linked in these same countries to the agricultural sector (commerce, seeds, biotechnology, machinery, etc.).
US governments have been flirting with the claim against “agricultural benefits” for a long time, thinking that the elimination of the economic support for local producers could help them knock out the Europeans. China, on its side, is a net importer of grains, but, at the same time, has a huge rural sector. That is the reason why the Chinese government asked for “special treatment” for the benefits of the less developed countries, in order to conserve some protection for their agricultural markets; particularly after the huge concessions that the Chinese themselves have already made on the subject in order to enter the WTO.
The peasants’ organizations of South-eastern Asia promoted street demonstrations that ended with almost 1,000 imprisoned and almost 200 injured in clashes with the “communist” police, in protests against any dismantlement of national agricultural protection.
The “European peasants” that defend the benefits received from the European Union, make the claim of a so-called “alimentary sovereignty”. They are also encouraged by powerful food-produce corporations that defend their market in the old continent. Result: the discussions in the WTO have been repeatedly paralysed due to the interests of major capitalist groups. The mentioned benefits do not include in general the “Northern countries”, either: they are monopolized by 20% of the producers.
On protectionism
The question of the benefits is a tradeable currency: the big groups of US and European imperialism want free access for their manufactured products. They demand the elimination of several kinds of measures that block involvment in State bidding, in the financial area, education and health, intellectual property trade, etc.
Currently, the benefits granted by the European Union are only equivalent to 3.5% of the economic support transferred to its agricultural sector. Something similar occurs with the question of cotton. In Hong Kong it was decided that in 2006 the benefits for those who export cotton would be eliminated, which would benefit some African countries that deal in the same product on the world market. But for the US, these benefits only represent 10% of all the aid transferred to their cotton producers (report of the “Observatory of the Debt in Globalization”, from Barcelona).
The report we have just quoted denies that the multinationals of services and industrial products “have wasted their time” in the recent meeting, as The Wall Street Journal (December 20) concluded. For instance, there was agreement on the modification of the method of negotiations for the deregulation in the world services market, which will allow for the acceleration of the process of liberalization of the sector. It is “a proposal that was rejected on several occasions by the Southern countries” and that “provides new instruments of pressure for making the countries in development open up their key sectors… The industrialized countries have finally got what they wanted” (Martin Khor, “Results of Hong Kong”).
But, as “extra payment”, the industrialized countries also “obtained important concessions from the countries in development on access to markets for non-agricultural products (NAMA)”, with commitments for the reduction of duties paid on industrial products in the countries in development “that have no precedent in the history of the multilateral trade system” (“Results…”, idem). Neither in this case must the protectionism of the “Southern countries” be considered as a synonym for the “national interest”. In Brazil, for instance, “Ford, GM, Nissan, Peugeout and Citroën do business under the protection of a 35% tax on imports” (The Wall Street Journal, December 5).
Conclusion
The WTO is a kind of IMF of capitalist world trade. The “small” agreement obtained in Hong Kong counted on the support of Messrs. Kirchner, Tabare Vazquez and the Chilean “socialist” Lagos, amongst others. “Only Venezuela and Cuba persisted in their objections…, but there were only two of them and they did not obtain the modification of the afore-mentioned text, nor were they able to block general agreement on the project as a whole…. They did manage to leave a record of their opinions, in a dramatic closing session, despite the disposition of the room that made it almost impossible for the delegates to express their thoughts” (“Results of Hong Kong”, idem).
During this decade, frictions in the WTO were softened or covered up by the expansion of trade and the “opening” of the Chinese market, which is wreaking havoc on society in that country. The conflictive course of the negotiations in the framework of the WTO during the last period is part of a worldwide capitalist crisis. The breakdown in the “globalized” economic circuits is not a problem of commercial regulations or deregulations: it is the consequence of saturation, overproduction and the over-indebtedness of a historically exhausted capitalism.