The big companies had their way completely. Now we've raised the profile of this issue, and we're not going back. It's that simple. Trade issues are anything but simple. Demonstrators who want justice for poor nations were reminded last week that Third World delegates to the WTO don't want developed nations to force them to allow union organizing.
Cheap labor is their competitive advantage.
Because it deals with so many separate issues, from farm subsidies to intellectual-property rights, the WTO attracts a very mixed bag of opponents, which is one reason that opposition to it has been hard to focus. Some of the WTO opponents want to reform the organization. Some want to abolish it. Virtually all of them resent the secrecy in which the WTO makes decisions that its 135 member nations are supposed to abide by. Dohrs' Burma group mobilized against the WTO in part to advance the right of states and localities to boycott companies that do business in Burma, now called Myanmar, which is one of Asia' s most saw-toothed dictatorships.