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GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2005 by Irogbe, Kema
THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) created the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 to oversee and implement the reductions in tariff and other non-tariff barriers that it negotiated. The WTO provides procedures for negotiating more tariff reductions and ruling on disputes arising over trade. Indeed, the WTO superseded GATT in all of its functions, and is now the world's organization for supposedly global trade enhancement. In 2000, it had over 140 members that included states from the peripheral countries. Its major body is a Ministerial Conference that meets at least once every two years to discuss and resolve trade policy issues. The WTO also has a General Council that oversees its operations, dispute settlement efforts, and other decisions. The General Council concentrates its activities in three areas: trade in goods, trade in services, and trade-related aspects of intellectual property protection.
With this backdrop, let us highlight the influence of the WTO on the underdeveloped countries not simply by examining its policy as preached but the reality of the policy as practiced. Although, the WTO proclaims to be the champion of facilitating or enhancing international trade by removing the trade barriers, on the contrary, it is a tool of multinational corporations that assault national sovereignty and cause environmental degradation. The protests or demonstrations and riots that greeted the WTO's 1999 ministerial conference in Seattle are a vivid reminder that, to paraphrase the late Reggae Superstar Bob Marley, "You can fool some people sometimes but you cannot fool them all the time". An increasing number of American working class has become aware of the shenanigans of the WTO. Supposedly an agent of free trade, the WTO's most important agreements promoted monopoly for U.S. firms: the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement consolidated the hold over high tech innovations by U. S. corporations like Intel and Microsoft, while the Agreement on Agriculture institutionalized a system of monopolistic competition for third-country markets between agribusiness interests of the United States and the European Union.33 The motives for the introduction of the trade-related intellectual property rights were: to enable their firms to capture more profits through monopolistic higher prices and through royalties and the sale of technology products; and to put in place stiff barriers preventing the technological development of potential new rivals from the peripheral countries. This confirms our theoretical assumption that transfer of technology is a myth rather than a reality. There is no wonder why American Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world. A man who is believed to be worth over $70 billion, a figure comparable to nearly all the yearly gross national products of African countries combined. While he may be legally challenged at home for monopolistic tendency or for his alleged Anti-Trust Act violations, he is certain to accrue enormous royalties from his international business deals. As one observer aptly argues:
