- The large-scale imports of goods from China taking place at present is a consequence of provision (i) of the WTO which we willingly accepted.
- The provision (ii) restricted the growth of our pharmaceutical companies.
- The drugs invented by MNCs were hitherto produced by our pharma companies using alternate processes and making them available at a fraction of the MNC's price and that freedom was lost.
- The major benefit expected from WTO was that our farmers will be able to export their produce to the developed countries and get much higher prices. But the developed countries fudged the rules of the WTO and continued to provide subsidies to their farmers and that deprived our farmers ability to export their goods.
- Thus the WTO and the globalisation has become largely a losing proposition for us. It has even become a losing proposition for developed countries like USA as well. They find that their jobs are disappearing.
- The WTO needs to shape up for the US to stay a part of it, said former Trump trade advisor Dan DiMicco. He further said that WTO has enabled China’s bad behavior and allowed the country to manipulate its currency from 1995 to 2015. Nobody has held them accountable.
- President Donald Trump told that the WTO has treated the US “very badly". Trump also said "I hope they change their ways. We’re not planning anything now, but if they don’t treat us properly we will be doing something.” Trump told his advisors, “I don’t know why we’re in it. The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to screw the US"
- India has walked out of the WTO mini-ministerial being held in Geneva in July 2006 to thrash out the thorny agriculture and industrial tariff issues, with the US refusing to agree for wider cuts in farm subsidies. The Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said: "We came here to negotiate, but there is no space for negotiations. We are on 8 to 9% growth. I've come here looking for a trade deal which helps me to reach 10 to 11%. I have not come here to get a trade deal which makes me go to 4 or 5%."
- The failure of WTO to move ahead in framing rules for global trade means that globalization is retreating.
- Our Mughal rulers thought that by allowing the British to trade in India will be beneficial for the country. Similarly, we have agreed and signed the WTO treaty because we thought we would get foreign investments and access to foreign markets for our exports.
- The globalisation under the Mughal rulers and the WTO are fundamentally similar. In both the cases, we ceded our sovereign rights willingly in the belief that the benefits will be more than the costs. In the former case the benefits to us were less than the costs and that arose Mahatma Gandhi and we retracted from that globalisation. Very much the same is happening with the WTO today.
- The globalisation succeeds only if it provides more benefits than costs to all the member countries. We can today walk out of the WTO because it is not beneficial to us. People are the ultimate sovereign and no power on earth can take their sovereignty away. The people will rise no matter how strong the forces of globalisation are.
- The challenge is to inform the people of the benefits and costs of globalisation to make an informed choice to withdraw or not. The worry is that our intellectuals will get coopted and misinform the people of the true costs of present globalisation.
- Our government should wake up, walk out of WTO and start supporting domestic businesses instead of running after MNCs.
Copying western models and implementing in India without proper groundwork is futile. The more we stay in WTO and globalisation, the more our poor and peasants would lose and suffer. Since the present WTO model can't be modified so easily due to the influence of vested interests like China, the only option India has is that it should walk out of WTO and work in the direction of mutually beneficial bilateral treaties and self-sufficiency.
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