IMF/WTO:
"I Can Change, I Can Change!"
By Robert Naiman

"People say that I am evil -- they may be right. But it's not as if I don't
try -- I just screw up, try as I might. But I can change, I can change!" So
says the "Saddam Hussein" character in the movie "South Park."

This sounds a lot like the rhetoric coming from Washington about
globalization. Activists have called for a halt to plans for expanding the
World Trade Organization, which has consistently ruled in favor of corporate
interests at the expense of developing countries. WTO and Clinton
Administration officials respond by saying the new round will be a
"development round," which will in some unexplained way redress the
devastation caused by forced trade liberalization.

Now, in a brazen display of "doublespeak," we are being told that the
International Monetary Fund, an institution whose economic policies kill
thousands of poor children in the developing world each day, has suddenly
been transformed into an anti-poverty organization. The IMF's "Enhanced
Structural Adjustment Facility," infamous for imposing brutal economic
austerity policies on the poorest countries in the world, is being renamed
the "Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility." Last week IMF Deputy Managing
Director Stanley Fischer, in what may have been a Freudian slip, referred to
the new program as the "Poverty and Growth Reduction Facility." And with a
number of "advocacy groups" cheering them on, the Administration and
Congress are poised to pass a bill sponsored by Representative Leach which
would give the IMF more US tax dollars and expand its power, under the guise
of "debt relief for the poorest countries."

Of course we should all support reforming unjust institutions, unless
they're incapable of being reformed. What we have to be on our guard
against, though, is attempts to put "old wine in new bottles" by dressing up
the same old unjust policies in fancy new rhetoric. There's never a shortage
of policy wonks to spin proposals about "new global financial architecture,"
"civil society" and other globaloney. Indeed, this is the sort of thing that
foundations love to give money for, because they can claim they're doing
something about an issue without actually challenging the privileges of the
powerful.

And the word "reform" itself has become more than a little debased. When the
IMF and the World Bank force a country to cut wages, lay off workers,
produce for export instead of the needs of their own people, and sell off
public property to cronies for less than its value, that's called "economic
reform."

We need a reality check. What's the likelihood that policymakers who pursue
policies that hurt workers and poor people at home are going to pursue
policies that help workers and poor people abroad? Clinton abolished the New
Deal guarantee that poor families would have income and called it "welfare
reform," thus exacerbating poverty in the United States. Yet we're supposed
to believe that Clinton's IMF is going to encourage other countries to
pursue policies to reduce poverty.

You don't have to leave the United States to see that our government's
efforts to "reform" globalization are a cruel joke. The Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a U.S. protectorate in the Pacific (closer
to the Philippines than to Hawaii), is allowed to set its own minimum wage
and immigration policies. As a result of the lack of federal government
oversight, garment manufacturers have been able to set up sweatshops there
in which indentured workers from China toil all day behind barbed wire. ABC
News found that pregnant garment workers there are "forced to have abortions
to keep their jobs." Yet garment manufacturers are allowed to sew "Made in
the USA" labels into clothes produced by this slave labor. You might think
that if you purchased a garment with a "Made in USA" label, you'd could
assume that workers who produced it got paid the federal minimum wage and
had their rights respected. You'd be wrong. Why should the same federal
officials who won't enforce our own laws to protect workers who live under
the American flag be trusted to protect the rights of workers overseas
through the corporate-controlled WTO?
The next time you hear someone go on about "reforming globalization,"
"greening" the WTO, or turning the IMF into an anti-poverty organization,
hang onto your wallet. Expanding the power of organizations controlled by
multinational corporations isn't going to help workers in poor countries --
and it isn't going to help workers here, either.

Robert Naiman naimanr@preamble.org
Preamble Center
1737 21st NW Washington, DC 20009
phone: 202-265-3263 x277
fax: 202-265-3647
http://www.preamble.org/