How the rules of the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were re-written and how, in 1995, the GATT became the WTO. The World Trade Organization enforces the rules of globalized trade and is the most powerful organization that hardly anybody heard of - to this day. The WTO can override a member country’s governments, laws and regulations if they are deemed a barrier to trade.
Against the background of the war in Ukraine, the collapse of the climate and todays extraordinary power of corporations, some business consultants are now warning that we are heading into an era of “de-globalization” with guaranteed disorder and scarcity. They say that global trade relations are coming apart, supply lines collapse and the war in Ukraine affects the world.
So it is time to visit again the rules of global trade. Expanded trade in the last 30 years has led to unprecedented environmental destruction; even the promoters of the World Trade Organization, such as the US, suffered the consequences of the export of jobs and industries.
Only 30 years ago I was present for the formation of the IFG, The International Forum on Globalization. At the exact time as the most powerful nations of the western world - foremost the US - wrote expanded and enforceable rules to globalize world trade, the IFG came up with an analysis and critique of the cultural, social, political, and environmental impacts of such economic globalization project.
The IFG was a North-South research and educational institution. They invited leading activists, economists, scholars, and researchers not just from the US but from Norway to Malaysia and from India to the Philippines. Here is the re-broadcast of the first program in the radio series on the history of trade rules under GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade with voices of some of the founders of the IFG.
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