From December 13 to 18, the World Trade Organization will hold its sixth ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, China. Rather than just discussing trade, negotiators will decide upon the fate of many domestic issues including public services, the global food supply, domestic health and safety regulations, global access to life-saving medicines, jobs, and development.

Global Exchange will join thousands of other members of civil society representing farmers, workers, environmentalists, women, people of faith, immigrants, human rights advocates, and more, from Hong Kong, Bolivia, South Korea, Canada, South Africa, Indonesia, Europe, the Philippines, the US, and other countries, in Hong Kong this December, to protest the undemocratic WTO and its destructive impact on communities, democracy, development, and the environment. Global Exchange's WTO expert Deborah James will be in Hong Kong beginning December 10th at (852) 6184-2342.

Negotiators are attempting to portray the crisis in negotiations WTO as though the problem were the lack of European (particularly French) or Brazilian "ambition" to break through the deadlock. But the real issue is that the WTO is in crisis because the model of corporate globalization has failed to produce economic growth, its supposed mandate. For ten years, the WTO has facilitated a surge in global trade -- and yet has failed to produce real economic growth or alleviate poverty. The WTO aims to consolidate a series of policy reforms that many countries have implemented over the last 25 years, including privatization of public services, flexibilization of the labor force, deregulation of industry, and lowering of tariffs and subsidies. But this same time period has seen a sharp decline in economic growth worldwide. Now that the record is clear, global social movements and many governments are questioning the WTO model and its attack on sovereignty, democracy and the ability of poor countries to develop.

The WTO has failed to produce economic growth because the entire model is actually geared to increase the power of corporations in the governance of the global economy. Rather than governing just trade, the WTO is better understood as a global corporate power-grab to impose a one-size-fits-all set of rules on national issues, such as public services, intellectual property, agriculture, and industrial development. Under this flawed model of corporate globalization, not only is economic growth negligible, but economic inequality has vastly increased, diminishing prospects for development - as demonstrated by the reduction in key indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy.

Not only is the WTO's record dismal, but future prospects look even dimmer. New figures show much less global economic growth from the current WTO round than originally projected. According to a recent study released by the World Bank, the current negotiations could expect global economic gains of between $18 billion and $119 billion by 2015, of which only 27% would reach developing countries. That is a mere 0.04 to 0.28 percent of world GDP. The vast majority of developing countries would be net losers, according to the study. Other models of economic growth have historically delivered much higher levels of development than even the supporters of the WTO model claim. In addition, other models -- such as focusing on investments in health care and education -- have proven to alleviate poverty far more effectively than just focusing on exports.

The potential failure of the 6th Ministerial will actually throw the WTO into a deep crisis. After failing to launch the so-called Millennium Round in 1999 in Seattle, this current round of negotiations was launched in Doha, Qatar in 2001. A second ministerial collapsed amidst massive civil society protests in September 2003. Talks were supposed to have been wrapped up by January 2005, yet are still stalled on the basic framework. If modalities are not completed by March, it will be extremely difficult for negotiators to wrap up the final negotiations in time to send the final agreements to the US Congress before the expiration of Fast Track negotiating authority in July 2007.

The 6th Ministerial of the WTO follows on the heels of another failed ministerial, the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The Bush administration attempted to use the meeting to jump-start the stalled FTAA talks, but the meeting ended without even a declaration. A similar scenario is likely for Hong Kong, because the same broken, corporate-driven model is being used.

Global Exchange will be joining the Hong Kong People's Alliance and hundreds of civil society groups from around the world in the March and Rally from Victoria Park to the Central Government Office on December 11, 2005 at 1pm. We will also participate with HKPA in the Week of Action on the WTO, to be held December 12-18th at Victoria Park and the Boys and Girls Club in Hong Kong. A full directory of events is available at http://hkpa.does.it/ (click on "Events" and "Complete list of known events").

Global Exchange is actively following the issues on the table at the WTO meeting in Hong Kong:

Services: Corporate interests are attempting to expand their control of the world's resources for profit privatizing or deregulating services, including health care, education, water and electricity distribution, media, transportation, postal services, telecommunications, accounting, construction, banking, and many others. Since the launching of the GATS 2000 services negotiations, countries have followed the "offer" and "request" model in negotiating which sectors to open up to WTO coverage. The EU and US recently ratched up the services negotiations by tabling proposals to set minimum benchmarks for services coverage. This would take away the flexibilities allowed for each country to decide the number of service sectors it would like to open up for liberalization, and goes far beyond the Doha Declaration mandate. In addition, the US Trade Representative does not have the negotiating authority to make substantial offers on Mode 4 of the Services, as Representative Sensenbrenner stated in a recent letter .

Agriculture: Negotiations are stuck on the issue of agriculture, because the US and Europe continue to maintain high subsidies on farm products of interest to developing countries. Agriculture negotiations are far behind the Services and NAMA, because it is the area in which the developed countries are not competitive. Most of the offers of the US to reform agriculture rules amounts to "box-shifting." In addition, the US Trade Representative does not have authority to negotiate reductions in domestic subsidies, as stated recently by the Chairs of the House and Senate Agricultural committees.

NAMA: The corporate push for WTO expansion also includes an agreement on Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA). Developed countries are attempting to use NAMA negotiations to erode the policy space of developing country governments to promote industrial development by taking away the very tool that developed countries used to develop: tariffs on industrial products. The Third World Network's Martin Khor has called the NAMA negotiations the "end of development." In addition, NAMA would increase trade of important natural resources such as forest products, gems and minerals, and fish products.