Globalisation is opposed through ignorance: let's keep it factual

However, anti-globalisation protestors charge that trade liberalisation—supervised by the WTO—has undermined employment and wages in OECD countries, lowered environmental standards, increased disparities between rich and poor nations, and weakened democracy and national sovereignty.

The WTO is also accused of being supranational (its ‘decisions’ overriding national governments), untransparent (its decision-making processes being hidden from the public), undemocratic (ignoring NGO demands and minority interests), and is charged with ‘marginalising’ poor countries (anti-development).

These assertions are at best parodies of reality, but they get wide publicity and attention in the media. Clearly, ignorance of the functions, structure and decision-making of the WTO continues to drive the anti-globalisation coalition.

Representing a broad array of groups and lobbyists, the anti-globalisation coalition has adopted the term ‘global civil society’ because it suggests community service based on voluntary organisations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although some NGOs are nationally based, they usually have international links and act internationally. They therefore lack the traditional obligations of citizenship and the legal status associated with ‘civil society’.

Moreover, most NGOs are run centrally by small powerful elites and are unaccountable to their societies. Most are little more than single-issue lobby groups gathered into a coalition against mostly imagined enemies.

Trade liberalisation is one of these imagined enemies. Trade liberalisation has facilitated trade flows, but it is technological change that has been the driving force behind globalisation. The NGOs themselves rely on the revolution in telecommunications to coordinate their international protests. Do they really believe they can stop the benefits of globalisation from spilling into the global economy?

A first step for the WTO under this anti-globalisation threat is to launch a new Round of trade negotiations to fill some of the gaps that NGOs are trying to exploit. The agenda for the new Round should be made manageable by removing many of the controversial new issues. The ‘built-in’ agenda from the Uruguay Round—covering agricultural trade, trade in services and reviews of specific agreements, including dispute settlement—provides a good basis for negotiations if industrial market access is added.

As a medium-sized OECD economy with little bargaining power, and buffeted by the revival of protectionism in Europe, Japan and the United States, Australia depends on multilateral rules to protect its trade interests. Australia’s participation in a strong WTO and an increasingly integrated global economy provides support for national independence and should not be sacrificed to lobbying by NGOs.

The WEF meeting in Melbourne this month seems like a good place to begin a counter-attack against the anti-globalisation lobbies. The great lesson of the 20th century is that liberal trade promotes prosperity and that meddling with the principles of free trade can easily trigger economic stagnation and the cataclysms that follow from economic despair.