TomPaine.com challenges "free trade" in ad directed at WTO

[Dover]

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As the World Trade Organization ministers gather in Canczn, TomPaine.com asks, in its New York Times Op Ad today, "Why has 'free trade' gone so wrong?"

The ad lays out some of the record.

The Labor Department estimates that 500,000 American jobs have moved to Mexico since NAFTA passed. Even so, wages in Mexico have fallen in real terms and poverty has increased. Since the WTO was established, more people worldwide are living on less than one dollar per day - the World Bank's measure of extreme poverty.

'Free trade' has devastated family farmers in the United States, Canada and Mexico by allowing giant agribusinesses to push commodity prices down to record lows even as they drive up food prices for consumers.

And NAFTA and the WTO have undermined democracy. Citizens might demand laws to protect the environment or provide safe workplaces. But if those laws cut into corporate profits, they can be challenged in secret tribunals and overturned without any public participation.

"What's the point of 'free trade' if these are the results?" the Op Ad asks. "Will 'free trade' serve humanity or will we serve it?" The ad points to the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz for direction. Stiglitz says that the issue is one of inclusive governance. "The WTO and other institutions that govern globalization must be open and transparent. They must be accountable as much to the poor" as much as to multinational corporations.

If "we are to make globalization work for the billions of people for whom it has not, if we are to make globalization with a human face succeed," Stiglitz writes, "then our voices must be raised. We cannot, we should not, stand idly by."

To view the ad, visit http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opads2.cfm/ID8834. For the package of accompanying stories visit the Web site at http://www.tompaine.com.


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