WTO and the Global Trading System

The West - led by successive US administrations, the World Bank and the IMF, and supported by phalanxes of development consultants - has told developing countries for over twenty years that their development depends on opening up their economies to world trade and attracting foreign investment. The result - living standards fall ever further behind those of the industrial countries and inequality soars. Now the West has initiated, at the Doha meeting of the WTO in late 2001, a new round of world trade negotiations. There ought to be one central issue: how can the rules of the world trading system be changed to foster the process of development rather than, as at present, primarily benefiting the already wealthy countries? Martin Khor offers a trenchant and wide-ranging overview of the current world trading system. He puts forward proposals for improving every major aspect of it and the WTO Agreements that enshrine its rules. Demanding that the developed countries live up to their own trade commitments, he outlines the overall principles informing a world trade system that genuinely fosters human development throughout the world. Here is a book whose concrete and detailed proposals can act as a focal point around which both developing countries and NGOs can organise their efforts during the forthcoming new trade round. The aim must be to bring about fundamental changes in the world trade system.