IntroductionIssues,Themes,and.PDFVIP

1 Introduction: Issues, Themes, and Recommendations The World Trade Organization faces two formidable challenges— one external and one internal—that threaten to undermine its efforts to liberalize trade and open markets around the world. First, it must mobilize support to confront escalating attacks by outside groups and individuals proclaiming that the WTO lacks democratic accountability and merely serves as a front for multinational corpo- rations and dehumanizing capitalist values. Second, even while it attempts to meet these external onslaughts, the WTO must ensure its own institutional viability, which is jeopardized by a formidable constitutional flaw. That internal flaw is the imbalance between the WTO’s consensus-plagued, inefficient rule-making procedures and its highly efficient dispute settlement system—an imbalance that creates pressure to “legislate” new rules through adjudication and thereby flout the mandate that dispute settlement judgments must neither add to nor diminish the rights and obligations of WTO members. At the same time, the United States faces a different, but related, set of challenges. In a world of increasing technological and eco- nomic integration, the United States must continue to balance and rebalance a defense of national sovereignty against grants of author- ity over its economic and social policy to international organizations such as the WTO. The United States must also devise domestic 1 2 FREE TRADE, SOVEREIGNTY, DEMOCRACY political mechanisms that provide greater democratic accountability for decisions affecting U.S. international obligations. These challenges to the WTO, to the United States, and to the future of trade liberalization are the issues this book explore