How free is ‘Free Trade’?
In order to view the videos online at Big Picture TV, you need to install the Macromedia Flash Player 8 (or later) and have Javascript enabled in your browser.
About the video: ‘How free is ‘Free Trade’?’
Lori Wallach talks about the unethical nature of multi-lateral trade agreements such as NAFTA and the seventeen agreements enforced by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Many WTO rules have little to do with trade. Instead, the majority of the agreements’ regulations relate to non-trade issues such as patent laws, foreign investment, land purchase rights and many others. These rules have little to do with free trade between countries.
Total views: 5,011
Filmed: Washington DC, USA on 13 April 2005
Credits: Interviewer - Marcus Morrell Camera and Editor - Marcus Morrell
Copyright © 2005 Big Picture TV
About Lori Wallach
Lori Wallach is one of the best known and most vocal critics of many of the trade agreements associated with corporate globalization. She is the Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a non-profit organization founded in 1995 to promote government and corporate accountability in the globalization and trade arena. By profession a trade lawyer, she has written a number of books and articles on trade and her comments have been widely broadcast on CNN, ABC, CNBC and CSPAN.
Other videos with Lori Wallach
Lori Wallach
What have the effects of ‘Free Trade’ been? (Part One)
In the first part of this two-part series, Lori Wallach explains how the name of free trade was usurped by multinational corporations and right-wing think-tanks in the early 1990s.…
Recorded: 13 April 2005
Lori Wallach
What have the effects of ‘Free Trade’ been? (Part Two)
Lori Wallach discusses the impact of unfair trade rules such as those of NAFTA and the WTO, established in 1994 and 1995 respectively. She gives examples of how biased trade regulations…
Recorded: 13 April 2005
Lori Wallach
Do foreign investors have too much power?
Lori Wallach explains how existing WTO agreements empower corporations at the expense of national governments, but are not absolute in their demands – requiring government…
Recorded: 13 April 2005
Related videos
John Cavanagh
Are corporations too powerful?
John Cavanagh gives examples of ways in which global corporations have set the world’s financial institutions – the IMF, World Bank and WTO (formerly GATT). Oil companies…
Recorded: 13 April 2005
Mae-Wan Ho
Has Darwin’s theory of natural selection been misinterpreted?
Mae Wan-Ho discusses how the Darwinian theory of natural selection has been misappropriated by business leaders and economists. The notion of ‘survival of the fittest,’…
Recorded: 31 January 2005
John Cavanagh
What impacts has globalization had?
John Cavanagh looks at the history of economic globalization. He believes we are emerging from a “dark age” of the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the rise of what George…
Recorded: 13 April 2005
John Cavanagh
Are there any alternatives to economic globalization?
John Cavanagh examines the arguments that came from corporate globalizers back in 1980s. Their message is no longer convincing. The rules by which corporations and financial institutions…
Recorded: 13 April 2005
Robert F Kennedy Jr
Can the free market work for the environment?
Speaking at the NRDC’s “Earth to L.A.” fundraiser, Robert F. Kennedy talks about the failures of America’s free market. Capitalism, and the democratic ideals…
Recorded: 6 May 2004
Thom Hartmann
Have western governments become more corporate controlled?
Hartmann describes the historic shift towards autocratic governance in Europe and North America. Conservative think-tanks in the USA prompted a shift towards the deregulation of…
Recorded: 16 October 2005
