The Wto Controversy: Exaggerated Fears and Unrealistic Hopes

The controversy has been abetted by several contending sides, each presuming that WTO has powers which in fact it doesn’t possess. WTO’s opponents, whose efforts were most conspicuously and disruptively evident in Seattle, consist of a diverse set of activists in both developed and less-developed countries. In the developed countries (the so-called “North”), the opponents include labor unions, children’s rights advocates, environmentalists, and French farmers—the latter advancing the imaginative argument that, without subsidies and other forms of protection from foreign competition, the quality of Europe’s culture, as well as its gastronomy, would suffer. Opposition of labor and environmental groups proceeds from the premise that WTO can and should apply to the less-developed countries (the so-called “South”) the same labor and environmental standards which apply in the “North.”