Various union officials, environmental groups, and other liberal and radical forces are planning protests outside the Seattle meeting calling for "fair trade." A typical leaflet produced by People For Fair Trade denounces the WTO as "A secretive trade group in Geneva… striking down our laws" that is responsible for "disappearance of manufacturing jobs" and "dirtier water and air."

In fact, the WTO is not a forum to free up world trade, but rather a tool used by the imperialist powers to reinforce their domination of the semicolonial world. It is also an arena that these powers use, or ignore — depending on what serves their interests — in their intensifying trade conflicts among themselves. Washington, in particular, often assumes the mantle of "free trade" as it pursues a trade policy aimed at gaining the maximum advantage for U.S. finance capital.

Like other economic and military pacts or organizations set up and used by the competing ruling classes of the economically advanced capitalist countries, the WTO simply reflects the world relationship of class forces. It's not the source of the worsening exploitation of workers and peasants around the world. The normal functioning of the imperialist system — the highest and final stage of capitalism that arose at the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one, when a handful of economically developed nations finished partitioning the world among themselves, subjecting two-thirds of humanity to their economic and political domination — is at the root of this economic and social devastation.

Class-struggle minded workers and farmers oppose the WTO and all other forums through which the imperialist powers seek to deepen their brutal exploitation of toilers around the world. But the "anti-WTO" campaign launched by the trade union officialdom, environmental groups, and others points away from the kind of international solidarity that workers and farmers need to build, and pushes working people towards the "America First" economic nationalism of the ultraright. The arguments put forward for "fair trade" are arguments for protectionism – measures against the foreign competitors of U.S. capitalists to preserve the profits of the latter.  
 

Anti-WTO protests feed nationalism

The nationalist character of the protests being prepared at the end of November in Seattle is reflected in a report in the October 16 People's Weekly World, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA, on the national convention of the AFL-CIO. The delegates, it states, "hammered out a program meant to defend the interests of American workers from the ravages of a global attack by transnational banks and corporations."

Such a stance feeds the reactionary nationalism of Patrick Buchanan and other rightists. Posing as a representative of the "American working man," Buchanan aims to divide working people's ranks between native-born and "aliens." He also scapegoats other oppressed layers of the working class for the crisis of capitalism.

Buchanan employs harsh rhetoric against international agreements like the WTO in order to deflect the anger of working people from the capitalist exploiters at home. "The Global Economy is proving to be a high-speed transmission belt of global financial disasters," he wrote in late 1997 in a column in which he announced the "triumph of a blazing new nationalism." Buchanan and other rightists are deadly enemies of working people, whose reactionary politics will be translated into violence against workers organizations through street gangs that the ruling class will turn to when they feel the crisis of their system is getting out of their control.  
 

Real role of World Trade Organization

To state that the WTO is about "free trade" as do both the publicity of the trade body and of the forces organizing protests against the Seattle meeting, is to misrepresent the real role of this outfit. The WTO, along with most other trade organizations — like the Asia Pacific Economic Council (APEC) or trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — is not neutral. The employing classes use it to advance their trade and foreign policies.

Washington utilizes the WTO in its ongoing efforts to weaken and eventually overthrow the Chinese and other workers states. It has continually blocked China's application for WTO membership as it tries to force Beijing to knock down more barriers to capitalist goods and investment, and to dismantle the country's planned economy. As it becomes clearer that investment and trade won't accomplish this in and of themselves, Washington has stepped up its military pressure and preparations as well. President Clinton has given the go-ahead for a new "Theater Missile Defense" system to be placed on the soil of Washington's Asian allies, designed to provide the Pentagon with an effective first-strike edge in a nuclear confrontation. Beijing has strongly protested this move.

Workers states such as China and Cuba have to participate in meetings of organizations like the WTO to defend their possibilities for minimizing damage from trade barriers and economic sanctions imposed by imperialist governments. Class-conscious workers defend the right of Cuba, China, and other workers states to take part, while at the same time explaining why the WTO serves the interests of Washington and its imperialist allies.

In a striking instance of how the masters of finance capital manipulate such forums to their ends, Clinton and the other representatives of imperialist governments pushed through preparations to send their troops to occupy East Timor at the meeting of another organization presented as a "free trade" body — the APEC summit held September 10–13 in Auckland, New Zealand. Washington has brought a number of trade disputes before the WTO. At the same time it has continued to act unilaterally to defend its imperial interests, regardless of what the rules of a given trade pact dictate.

The U.S. rulers and the European Union (EU) powers, for example, clashed sharply over the passage of the Helms-Burton bill that Clinton signed into law in March 1996. This legislation escalated Washington's economic war against Cuba. It permitted Cuban-American and other U.S. businessmen whose property on the island was confiscated by Cuban workers and peasants after the 1959 revolution to sue companies abroad that invest in those properties. Canadian government officials protested against the Act. The EU passed a resolution condemning the legislation. "It is … unacceptable that a third country could tell us how to conduct our trade," stated EU official Jean-Pierre Leng at that time.

When the WTO appointed a panel to hear an EU complaint on the matter, U.S. government officials stated that the panel had "no competence to proceed."

"We will not show up," said a White House aide. Confronted with Washington's economic and military weight — demonstrated the previous year on European soil in Bosnia — the EU allowed the deadline for pursuing the case to lapse.  
 

Interimperialist rivalry

That clash between the EU powers and Washington was not an isolated affair.

In 1995, the WTO's first year of existence, Washington launched a trade offensive against Japan, demanding that it expand the market for U.S.-manufactured automobiles and auto parts. U.S. trade officials filed a grievance with the WTO, and at the same time gave notice they would unilaterally impose tariffs on luxury Japanese cars that would effectively double their wholesale prices.

Last March the U.S. government slapped tariffs on more than a dozen products exported by EU countries to try to force the removal of tariffs on bananas exported to Europe from Central and South American plantations, where U.S. companies predominate. Washington judged a ruling by the WTO in 1997, which had led to a partial tariff reduction by the EU, to be insufficient.

Earlier this year, Washington and Ottawa announced sanctions against the EU, retaliating against its 11-year ban on imports of hormone-treated U.S. beef. The governments in New Zealand and Australia have complained to the WTO about quotas and tariffs imposed by Clinton on their lamb exports, also in July. Other conflicts have broken out over EU threats to refuse landing rights to older U.S.-manufactured planes fitted with "hush kits." One of the sharpest head-to-head confrontations has been between the passenger jet manufacturers Boeing and the European Airbus consortium.

While the U.S. rulers often present themselves as the foremost advocates of so-called free trade, they don't talk about their simultaneous protectionist policies. The U.S. government maintains 8,000 taxes on foreign goods, with some as high as 458 percent of their import value, according to James Bovard's book, The Fair Trade Fraud. Since 1980, Washington has negotiated more than 170 bilateral accords to restrict imports. Quotas agreed to affect up to half of world trade. The U.S. government maintains 3,000 clothing and textile quotas, as well as limits on autos, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, beef, and machine tools. All of these measures are designed to bolster the profit of U.S. capitalists.

The unsettled and conflict-ridden reality of international trade in a world dominated by the capitalist market system surfaces in such disputes. The rivalries among Washington and other major capitalist powers, the largest of which are Germany and Japan, form a growing and destabilizing factor in world trade. In their tussles, each of these giants is attempting to shape the WTO, or interpret its rules, in a way that can give legitimacy to or rationalize its trade demands.

One indication of the growing disorder in trade relations is the militaristic language often used by commentators on international trade. One European commentator warned recently of the danger of different trade disputes "degenerating into political trade wars."  
 

Workings of imperialist system

Among the imperialist powers represented in the WTO are the governments of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States, as well as a number of countries from Western Europe, including Britain, France, and Germany. The capitalist rulers of these countries exploit not only the workers and farmers within their nations' borders, but in the Third World as well.

Such powers also dominated the WTO's predecessor, GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), formed in 1947. GATT and "other international credit and financial bodies," established around the same time, "proved to be effective weapons for defending U.S. interests," said Ernesto Che Guevara, speaking to a United Nations-organized conference in 1964. Guevara, born in Argentina, was a central leader of the Cuban revolution.

The "penetration of capital" from the imperialist countries "sometimes takes very subtle forms," said Che. "The International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [World Bank], GATT … are examples of international organizations placed at the service of the great capitalist colonialist powers — fundamentally, United States imperialism."

The imperialist powers in the WTO and other such bodies aim to reinforce the continual transfer of wealth from the semicolonial world to the coffers of imperialist banks and other such financial institutions. They do not create that transfer, however, for it occurs as part of the normal workings of the imperialist economic system. As Che explained in his speech to the UN conference, these bodies have the character of "fetishes," which the ruling class and its lieutenants in the labor movement use to confuse working people about the real source of the problem. Rather than having an independent existence, these institutions act as a conduit through which the world relationship of class forces is expressed.

The oppressed countries, which have inherited economies distorted by centuries of colonial and semicolonial domination, face an accelerating squeeze as the prices for raw materials and other commodities they export drops and the rates for manufactured goods they are forced to import rises. From 1980 to 1987, for example, the buying power of Africa's export earnings decreased by 30 percent, and that of Latin America and Asia by 25 and 10 percent respectively. Export prices received for commodities have fallen especially sharply in the last couple of years. For African countries prices for nonfuel primary commodities dropped by 7.2 percent in 1998; for Asian countries the drop was 10.8 percent.

Other figures confirm the gap in development. In 1991 the Gross National Product of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean averaged $2,390 per person per year. That was among the highest in the "low and middle income" world according to the World Bank, which compiled the statistics. The comparable figure for the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, made up almost entirely of the imperialist countries, was $21,530, or nine times greater. The figure in sub-Saharan Africa stood at $350.

Indicating the gap in modern infrastructure, per capita use of electricity in Latin America and the Caribbean was one-sixth that of the "high income" countries in 1995. Twenty-six percent of roads in the former area were paved in 1996; in the latter, 92 percent.

This unequal relationship, reinforced at every turn with or without the existence of bodies like the WTO, brings devastating consequences for working people of these countries. To take just one instance, a person in North America lives 26 years longer on average than their counterpart in Africa.

In some of the semicolonial countries significant industrialization and economic growth has occurred, radically changing social relations and drawing more toilers under the sway of the capitalist market system. But such development primarily profits the imperialist banks and corporations, and increases national indebtedness.

The imperialist banks suck billions of dollars in interest payments from the wealth produced by the labor of working people of the Third World. By 1987 this debt stood at $1.2 trillion. In exchange for rescheduling payments, governments in the semicolonial world were forced to turn over the ownership of many factories, mines, and land to imperialist interests in a "debt rescheduling" programs. Still the foreign debt of these countries mounts, standing in 1996 at nearly $2 trillion. Payments of interest and principal robbed nearly $250 billion dollars from semicolonial countries in 1999.  
 

Trade pacts used to deepen exploitation

GATT's last seven years were devoted to the Uruguay round of trade talks among 125 countries, which lowered many tariffs on imports and opened up some hitherto protected markets. The negotiations also ushered the WTO into being on Jan. 1, 1995. The WTO's brief covers a wider range of trade issues than GATT. Rulings by its panel are supposed to be binding, and in theory can be enforced by authorizing sanctions.

The governments of Pakistan, Indonesia, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic have submitted a paper to the WTO's general council, criticizing "the meager benefits derived by developing countries from the Uruguay Round agreements which they had said had operated to the advantage of the industrialized world," reported the Financial Times in an article entitled "WTO members square up for new round of discord." Cases before the WTO illustrate its one-sided character. As of September 24, governments had placed 140 disputes before the body at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. "Developed countries" — a euphemism for the imperialist powers — had brought 105 of them, many directed at countries in the Third World.

The British business weekly the Economist reported on September 25 that "according to a new study … rich countries' average tariffs on manufacturing imports from poor countries are four times higher than those on imports from other rich countries." As the long-term crisis of the capitalist order unfolds, struggles to throw off the yoke of debt slavery and domination of finance capital, like those that have marked the entire imperialist epoch will continue and intensify. These will be driven by the grinding exploitation imposed by the imperialist system, and by the vicious trade policies of Washington and its rivals.

At the same time, the rivalry among the imperialist powers will also intensify, on the diplomatic and foreign policy fields as well as in trade relations. The logic of this trade rivalry does not end on the field of trade, but on the field of battle, as has happened with catastrophic results several times in the past.

Both those among the few wealthy ruling families who call for "free trade" and those whose slogan is "fair trade" are trying to drag working people behind their trade wars and prepare them for shooting wars. Class-conscious workers demand from the rulers of the country they live in withdrawal from institutions like the WTO and favor their dissolution. At the same time they are equally opposed to the nationalist campaigns of liberals and ultrarightists alike, whose arguments are echoed by the trade union officialdom, against these trade organizations. Only a fight for international working-class solidarity and for working people to take power out of the hands of the exploiting classes can end the imperial power of Washington and its allies once and for all — through trade pacts or any other agreements.

A future article will take up in some detail the nationalist arguments of the forces building the November 30 "anti-WTO" protest in Seattle and similar actions.  
 
 
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