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The World Trade Organization as we know is the global rule-making body on international trade. Big Tech and other corporations operating in transport, logistics, telecoms, finance, agribusiness, industrials, many other sectors are lobbying governments to use the WTO to liberalize the digitalization that is currently transforming the global economy. And particularly the governance of today's most valuable resource which is data.
So what's a quick status update? Well, in 2016 the Obama administration first proposals on digital trade in the WTO after hiring a corporate tech lobbyist under the guise of eCommerce talks in the WTO.
Proponents tried to get all 164 members to agree to a new mandate to negotiate binding rules on digital trade. And to permanently push aside the development agenda which has been pending since 1995. Okay.
But developing countries resisted the imposition of this new corporate agenda. And they blocked the new mandate at the last WTO Ministerial which was in Buenos Aires in December 2017.
However, a group of 76 countries launched talks among themselves to bring about a binding agreement on digital trade in the WTO. Now these nations are constantly lobbying and pressuring other developing countries that are not participating also to join their ranks.
Their aim is to conclude an agreement involving as many countries as possible. As well as to secure a mandate for talks among members of the WTO, all the members, by the time of the next Ministerial Conference. So that was supposed to occur last month but it's been postponed at this time.
Now, one of the characteristics of the contemporary global economy is that while the productivity of workers and small businesses has increased over time obviously. Large corporations continually take more and more than their share. As I mentioned, they have used their surplus profits to intervene in the policy making process to design the market to distribute more of the gains to themselves.
Now, this process has been facilitated by digitalization. And the proposed rules are intended to lock in and accelerate that appropriation of the productivity of workers. So in reality, Big Tech has proposed the rules in order to consolidate its exploitative business model.
So what does it include? It includes gaining rights to access markets globally; they want to be around the world. They want to lock in deregulation. And they want to evade and prevent future regulation. They want to access an unlimited supply of cheap labor that has been stripped of its rights. They want to expand their power through monopolies. They want to avoid payment of taxes.
And now the newest aspect, they want to be able to extract and control personal, social and business data around the world. Data is the lifeblood of the digital economy. So whichever firms dominate artificial intelligence in their sectors by virtue of their big data set will dominate their industries.
Think about the fact that US-based Big Tech transnational corporations - Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft - are now five of the six largest corporations in the world. Now the proponents are disguising their proposal in the Trojan Horse of being able to unleash development though the power of micro, small and medium enterprises using eCommerce.
These are not e-Commerce rules. They go far beyond e-Commerce and would result in the liberalization of all aspects of the economy. They really represent a new constitution; binding global rules on the entire digital economy written by Big Tech for its own benefit.
Now, these rules were already in the Trans Pacific Partnership. So it's in the TPP. They also currently exist in the EU Japan FTA [Free Trade Agreement] and the U S Japan FTA and in the renegotiated NAFTA, the so called US-Mexico-Canada agreement
So if your country is a member of the TransPacific Partnership, you already have these rules.
If you're part of USMCA, if you are EU with Japan, you already have them. But that doesn't mean that they have to be exported to the whole world.
Because they are much harder to change if they are agreed in the WTO. Between the EU and Japan, you can change it when you finally decide that it makes no sense for your country. But we need to not have them in the WTO.
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