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Global hopes, global fears
Protesters abseiling in Seattle to fight world trade |
As the next world trade round gets under way in Seattle, the BBC's Rodney Smith wonders whether everybody will benefit or whether it's a case of the big boys ganging up against the little ones.
 World trade: Heavyweight boxers fighting against bantamweight.  |
| Rodney Smith |
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Rodney Smith |
As in most arguments, many have a point.
If you are a heavyweight boxer, boxing rules require you to fight against another heavyweight. You wouldn't expect to fight against a bantamweight.
Many small companies, and companies in the developing world which do not have the resources available to the big multinationals, feel that they are the bantamweights in the trade liberalisation contest. So are their governments, who fear being thrashed if they allow the rules to change.
Yet all the evidence is that trade liberalisation so far has fostered world growth on a scale that post-War reconstructionist politicians hardly could have dreamed of.
The WTO has time on its side. |
| Rodney Smith |
But American corporations are inclined, as are most big multinationals of whatever nationality, to look back to home when not on domestic soil, and this can make them appear arrogant and even conquistadorial.
Around the world, the WTO has been the focus of demonstrations, as here at WTO headquarters in Geneva |
No one expects these WTO negotiations to be over quickly - in the first instance, they are supposed to last three years. But the previous negotiations, under the WTO predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the Uruguay Round, started in 1986 and didn't conclude until 1994. Most signatories are still - sometimes reluctantly - implementing agreements settled then.
The previous Tokyo Round lasted seven years. Both rounds brought benefits for many, but inevitably, not all. There may be much wrong with the aims of the Seattle Round, not that those are settled yet, but the WTO has one huge advantage that will not always be available to the armies of protestors expected in Seattle - whatever else, it has time on its side.
And, like the demonstrators, big business may just have to wait for results as well.
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