Free trade became promoted as never before. For conservatives,
there was a natural step from recognizing the benefits of markets at
the domestic level to advising Southern countries to become more open
to international trade. Trade was seen as a powerful engine of economic
growth, because exports created jobs, while imports prompted local
businesses to enhance the quality and the diversity of their products.
Resolutely supportive of this way of thinking, the WTO declared
in 2002 that the elimination of all tariff and non-tariff barriers
could increase the income of Third World countries by $370 billion.^79
Conservatives also embraced the idea that growth helped the poor.
Citing such examples as China, India, Vietnam, or Uganda, they
asserted that the countries that had best succeeded in reducing poverty
were those with the highest growth rates.^80 The full reasoning was
straightforward: since trade was good for growth, and growth good
for the poor, then trade was necessarily good for the poor. This line of
argument, ultimately, summarized the neoliberal stance on the bene-
fits of globalization for developing countries.
The Uruguay Round negotiations (1986–94), the creation of the
World Trade Organization (1995), and the launching of the Doha
Round (2001) contributed to integrating the South in a trade regime
that remains by and large defined and shaped by the North. Govern-
ments of the North, indeed, drafted new norms for services, intellectual
property, and investment, in line with their own national interests.
Although developing countries did make some gains in recent trade
talks, their historical concerns regarding the acceptance of import
substitution policies, the promotion of self-reliance, the possibility of
special and differential treatment, and the reform of decision-making
structures were for the most part put aside. To this day, it is still
unclear whether Third World countries, starting with giants such as
India and Brazil, ended up joining the game of international compe-
tition willingly. Be that as it may, in the trade negotiations of the past
two decades the poor conceded more than the rich, and the WTO often
(^79) World Trade Organization, “To Doha and Beyond: A Roadmap for
Successfully Concluding the Doha Development Round,” remarks by Mr. Mike
Moore, Director-General, WTO, Montreux, April 12, 2002 (www.wto.org/
english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm83_e.htm).
(^80) World Bank,Globalization, Growth, and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World
Economy, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2002, p. 6.
160 Left and Right in Global Politics