The editorial WTO decision benefit to poor (SP Sept. 3) attempts to explain how a new World Trade Organization stipulation allowing cheap, generic versions of essential medicines will greatly benefit the world's impoverished and disease-stricken populations.
The writers are missing a few facts.
- The WTO specifies higher export tariffs for nations which are not in good standing with the U.S. or are poor and not major players in global capitalism.
Developing nations, with their abundant cheap labour, are considered a threat by the affluent countries which shelter most of the world's transnational corporations.
In the WTO, poor nations can supposedly engage in collective bargaining -- in theory, they can outvote the affluent. This never happens, because rich nations (principally, the U.S.) have subverted the decision-making structures.
Unless countries exporting these generic drugs can afford the high tariffs, this WTO policy "milestone" is nothing more than legitimation on paper.
- How would extremely impoverished nations, dependent on aid, afford to import drugs? Why is importing a product cheaper than manufacturing it? It isn't.
The WTO deals are not about finding the most rapid and effective means to alleviate impoverished nations' suffering; they're about controlling international development so it promotes market dependency of impoverished, developing nations on affluent, industrialized ones.
The WTO enshrines neo-liberal values in a body of trade law. It is not so concerned with the poor's socio-economic welfare as with how best to profit from their "developing," i.e. how best to exploit their land and labour.
This drug deal is intended to protect the intellectual patent rights of transnational pharmaceutical companies.
The editorial writers levelled several low blows at activists and those who protest the WTO, IMF and World Bank.
The immoral and unethical policies of these international institutions cause economic and cultural disruption in countries all over the world. Anyone who uncritically advocates the WTO equally lacks ethical judgment.
Kevin Walby
Saskatoon
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