Ten Years of the WTO: Subordinating Development to Free Trade NICOLA BULLARD/ CHANIDA CHANYAPATE T he Uruguay Round of trade negotiations gave birth to a powerful in­stitution in 1995, the World Trade Organization which, in concert with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund( imf ), would serve to strangle the domestic policy autonomy of the South. The wto was a significant departure from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( gatt ). Its agenda was much more ambitious than the gatt , going far be­yond simply reducing tariffs on industrial products to 1. lowering the tariffs in agricultural goods, through the Agreement on Agriculture, 2. further limiting the scope for countries to determine their domestic legislation, through the Trade Related Investment Measures( trims ) and the General Agreement on Services( gats ), 3. permanently consigning the technologically less advanced to eco­nomic backwaters by dramatically restricting access to technology, through the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement ( trips ) and 4. subordinating development concerns to free trade principles favorable to corporations. The wto has been hailed as an achievement for multilateralism. Yet its im­pact on the world’s poor has been overwhelmingly negative. On the eve of the revolt by the developing countries at the wto ministerial in Seattle, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development( unctad ) is­sued a damning evaluation of the then nearly five-year-old world trade re­gime:»The predicted gains to developing countries from the Uruguay Round have proved to be exaggerated … Poverty and unemployment are again on the rise in developing countries which had struggled for many years to combat them. Income and welfare gaps between and within countries have widened further … As the twentieth century comes to an end, the world economy is deeply divided and unstable. The failure to achieve faster growth that could narrow the gap between the rich and the poor must be regarded as a defeat for the entire international community. ipg 2/2005 Bullard/Chanyapate, WTO: Subordinating Development to Free Trade 21