November 2005

Yoko Kitazawa

Dear Aileen,

Your paper "ten years of WTO" is an excellent analysis of the WTO, and has made me to articulate the issues within the WTO clearly.

In comparison with the previous body which is GATT, you clarify the WTO's additional and controversial four agenda, namely, the AoA, the TRIMS/GATS, the TRIPs, and free trade principles, that are detrimental to the developing countries in general and to the people living in poverty in particular.
I fully agree with you.

I would like to raise an argument..
While I agree your proposal of creating a new viable trade regime, at the same time, I feel some contradiction in the following part;

You said that the WTO's fundamental principles, i.e. free trade and "development stems from trade liberalization" are wrong. However, in the last chapter, you said that the WTO needs to be whittled down significantly, by taking those " behind the border issues" away from it.
That means the whittled down WTO continues to exist.

Yoko

The WTO when it is whittled down significantly, but it will exist with the fundamental principles which is fundamentally wrong. What is the relation with the new trade regime, which you propose ?

My view is that the WTO should be demolished, and be replaced by a new and viable trade regime.
I see that the WTO together with the IMF and the World Bank is the international institutions which promote neo-liberal globalization.

However, those three have different functions and rules.
I feel the IMF as currency stabilizer and the Bank to be a international lending institution for development projects are to be allowed to exist, after being reformed significantly and whittled down politically.

I agree with your strategy for change. I also wish to stress the power of emerging global farmers movement against the WTO in the North and South. This is unprecedented in the history.

Yours sincerely,

Yoko Kitazawa