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Brazil, WTO, and the transformation of the global system
Andreas Hernandez
(Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- The World Trade Organization (WTO) Negotiations in Cancun, Mexico collapsed
on Sunday and the relationships between rich and poor countries will likely
never be the same - nor will the global system. The group of twenty-two
developing nations (G22) that emerged as a negotiating bloc directly
challenged the continuation of a one-sided neoliberal system that protects
investors and corporations of wealthy countries while opening developing
nations to the vulnerability of the global market. Brazil has emerged as a
catalyst and organizer for bringing together developing and progressive
countries to transform the weapons of neoliberalism into tools for the
social agenda, opening possibilities for a more just global order.
The G22 publicly announced itself after a profoundly unfair joint US and
European Union (EU) proposal for what would be negotiated in the Cancun WTO
meetings was tabled last week in Geneva. This proposal maintained US and EU
protections against agricultural goods from developing nations (often their
largest export) but greatly weakened controls on foreign investment and
other trade regulations for developing countries. The G22 is comprised of
Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines,
Argentina, Turkey and Costa Rica, among others. Previous WTO negotiations
have been characterized by the US and the EU isolating developing countries
and forcing through one-sided agreements that benefit investment and
corporations from wealthy countries and limit the export potential of
developing countries. The G22, in coalition with an African bloc, have been
able to stand firm, refusing to move forward on negotiations important to
wealthy countries until the question of agricultural subsidies and
protections of wealthy countries are brought to the table in a substantial
manner. Approximately seventy other developing nations in addition to the
G22 refused to sign the final US and EU-written accord in Cancun. The
ongoing round of WTO negotiations have come to a halt.
The G22 did not emerge spontaneously but is one of the first fruits of
intense international organizing begun in Brazil last May. The new
Brazilian government led by the Worker's Party (PT), well-known for its
innovative policies at local and state levels for increasing citizen
participation, took federal power in January after a landslide election for
a broad PT-led coalition. This Party was formed roughly thirty years ago as
a new type of Left Party, through the coming together of unions, social
movements and intellectuals towards the end of Brazil's Military
Dictatorship. Their federal mandate has been supported by an amazing
coalition of broad sectors of society, from the Landless Movement (MST) to
national industrialists, who all unite around their clear vision that the
neoliberal project is not working for Brazil and around their common support
for a new Social Pact - sometimes spoken as a Brazilian New Deal. Around 70%
of Brazilians live in poverty, with 40% living on less than a dollar a day
although Brazil is the 11th wealthiest country on the planet; most of the
wealth is concentrated in few hands or leaves the country through
multinational corporations. Not wishing to go the isolation road as
Venezuela or Cuba have done, Brazil has begun an astonishing organizing
effort globally to attempt to transform the weapons of neoliberal domination
into tools for social justice and solidarity.
This project began to be visible in late May with the agreement of eight
Latin American countries to negotiate as a group in the Free Trade of the
Americas (FTAA) negotiations. In early June, the Brazilian President Luis
Inacio Lula da Silva (popularly known as Lula) and the new President of
Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, announced their shared priority of establishing
a common parliament for the Mercosur regional integration block (Brazil,
Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Associate Members Chile and Ecuador) with
the vision of a shared currency and the integration of Peru and other
nations of the Andean pact (Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela). Brazil
is considering Mercosur the principal medium for consolidating the
sustainable development of the region and fortalizing the presence of South
America in the World scene. Peru has since become a member of Mercosur with
the rest of the Andean pact close behind.
Around the same time, Brazil, India and South Africa announced the creation
of the Group of Three (G-3), with the possibility of becoming the G-5 to
include China and Russia (who themselves had recently formed an alliance
with the specific aim of countering US power). The creators of the G-3 hoped
the alliance would also bring an alliance between Mercosur and the Southern
Africa Customs Union (South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and
Lesotho), particularly in WTO negotiations. The first goal of the G-3 was to
begin working to gain a seat for one of its' members as a permanent member
of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and to reform and democratize
this Council in which five countries - not one of them from the Global
South - virtually run the UN through their veto power. The Secretary General
of the UN, Kofi Annan, has supported Brazil's accession and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair has formally announced his backing for Brazil to gain a
seat. Lula will be delivering the opening speech for the next UN session at
the end of this month. He has also non-officially been nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize.
This past week Lula formally backed the idea of Peru's President,
Alejandro Toledo, of forming a "South American Nation", beginning with the
conclusion of bringing together Mercosur and the Andean Pact. These nations
share the view that they need a community of South American countries to not
be suffocated by the economic power of the US through the FTAA and other
mechanisms.
The PT announced in June that they will be hosting the 2003 Congress of the
Socialist International, which last met in November 1999 (before the Seattle
WTO Ministerial). This Congress will bring together leaders from 141 social
democratic, socialist and labor parties from every continent, including
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Prime Minster Tony Blair. The PT
is considering this as a platform for delivering their message to the world
and many are seeing this Congress as an important moment of consolidation
and a launching point for a new global social project after two decades of
neoliberal policies and practices.
The last weeks brought together representatives of numerous developing
countries, in Geneva and elsewhere, for preparatory meetings for the Cancun
WTO negotiations. With the tabling of the US/EU proposal for what was to be
negotiated in Cancun, Brazil's emerging core group of developing nations
quickly gained new members and solidified into the G20, which in the course
of the Cancun meeting became the G22.
The US acted aggressively and unsuccessfully to try to break up the G22
throughout the Cancun negotiations. Pressure was put on all G22 member
countries and Costa Rica, Colombia and Guatemala were specifically warned
that their cohesion with this bloc threatened other agreements that these
countries are developing individually with the US. Significant bribe money
in the form of aid was offered to sympathetic African countries to distance
themselves from the G22.
Towards the end of the meeting, Brazilian representatives held a briefing
with civil society groups from around the planet, facilitated by Lori
Wallach from the US organization Public Citizen. The PT has been a central
force in bringing global civil society groups together in recent years
through the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This briefing
marked a new step for Global Justice groups as they begin working with
progressive governments inside the WTO for the social agenda.
The G22 has made clear that they will postpone the scheduled date of January
2005 for the end of this WTO negotiation round if the needs of developing
countries do not enter the negotiations. The G22 has stated that it will
continue to act beyond Cancun and will expand to issues beyond agriculture
and to forums beyond the WTO, working to move the current global system in a
more just direction.
This tremendous organizing on a global scale, directly challenges a
neoliberal world and the power and is a might be the first visible signs of
the possibility of a social democratic turn in the global system. This
global coalition building is using the neoliberal tool of Free Trade as a
weapon against the system of neoliberalism itself. By negotiating as blocs
highly concerned with the social agenda, Brazilian-led coalitions and their
expanding alliances are attempting to turn Free Trade into Fair Trade by
beginning to demand standards for workers and an end for protectionism only
for wealthy countries, as conditions for trade. Are these major structural
signs of a challenge to world domination by the US, Europe and Japan and the
legacy of 500 years of exploitation of the Global South - first through
colonization and then developmentalism and neoliberalism?
It may be a worthy caution that Brazil's new government came to be through
intense struggle, especially by those who have been the most exploited. The
possibility of an emerging global architecture with more social solidarity
may only be sustainable to the extent that mobilization continues on all
levels, democratizing and transforming the institutions which structure
people's lives. Without this movement, the possibilities of an emerging
global architecture might be little more than an opening for a few more
financial elites from the Global South. However, a more democratic global
architecture would certainly provide the structure to put the brakes on
corporate power and provide a basis for traditionally Left-of-Center parties
that have been dragged Right by market forces during the neolberal era, to
act for the social agenda and a more just planet. Mr. Zoellick, the US
Trade Representative may yet have to eat his words from last year, when he
said that Brazil could go trade with Antarctica if they did not like the
US terms for "Free Trade".
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