Brazil: The WTO and Lula’s “struggle” for the G-20

The G-20 nations organized within the WTO to defend their common interests in the face of the predominance of the United States and the European Union. It includes countries with strong agro-export sectors, such as Brazil, India, Mexico, Egypt, China and South Africa. The G-20’s principal objective is to achieve reform in world agricultural trade policies, reducing the subsidies and incentives granted to agricultural production in the US and the import tariffs imposed by the European Union.

In the recent negotiations, the G-20 managed to wrest from the EU and the US a relative concession: the approval of a series of restrictions on the practice of commercial dumping. Nonetheless, in practice, this concession is being ignored and has produced nothing. As these two major blocks—the US and the EU—do not accept these restrictions, the WTO runs the risk of falling into terminal crisis and disappearing. Together with the breakdown of the WTO would come the breakdown of multilateral negotiations and the growth of protectionism through bilateral agreements, in which the will of those countries with the greatest political, economic and military power will be imposed with even greater ease.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/braz-j24.shtml