Whose Trade Organization?: The Comprehensive Guide to the Wto

Surveying eight years of the WTO's gradual erosion of democracy around the world. No country can be allowed to resist American cultural imperialism.US Chamber of Commerce letter to the Office of the US Trade Representative, 1996 When trade bureaucrats, government ministers and heads of state from around the world gather in Mexico this September for a meeting of the World Trade Organization, they will be confronted by the opposition that has followed the group since it was set up eight years ago, from Seattle to Quebec to Genoa. As Lori Wallach ably demonstrates in this punchy new book, the organization's detractors have ample cause for protest. Whose Trade Organization? documents the WTO's persistent undermining of the attempts by governments around the world to maintain independent standards on everything from food safety and public health to protections for workers and the environment. With updated, case-by-case studies, the book exposes the lopsided agreements, secret tribunals and legal challenges that are the tools of the WTO's trade, and reveals the core of an aggressive agenda for corporate-led trade liberalization. With an introduction by Ralph Nader, Whose Trade Organization? shows how the WTO can be effectively challenged and the way to build a public-centered, democratic alternative.