The World Trade Organization issued three rulings in 2011 that restrict our ability to protect public health, the environment, and consumers.
The WTO is basically a secret trade court. It's the enforcer for global trade agreements. When an industry doesn't like another country's law that protect domestic consumers, the industry gets their government to challenge the other country's law in the WTO. This enables corporations to do an end-run around democracy. For some background, see here.
(For a funny spoof of the WTO's website, see www.gatt.org).
Here are three recent rulings from the WTO:
1. WTO rules against U.S. efforts to reduce teenage smoking.
In 2009, Congress passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA). It bans certain candy- and clove-flavored cigarettes, which, according to Congress, tobacco companies use to entice teenagers into smoking. Indonesia, which exports clove cigarettes, challenged the ban.
As it usually does when a law that protects consumers is challenged, the WTO struck down the law. See here.
2. WTO to Flipper: Drop Dead.
The U.S. has labels for tuna that allow consumers to tell whether the tuna was caught with methods that are safe dolphins. Even though some tuna caught by Mexican fishers do not meet these requirements, Mexico wanted the dolphin-safe label applied to Mexican tuna. So, Mexico challenged our labels.
On September 15, the WTO struck down our dolphin-safe tuna labels. See here.
3. (Not) COOL.
Many consumers want to know where their food comes from. So, in 2008, Congress (finally) required that meat carry "Country of Origin Labelling" (COOL) labels that tell which country various meat products come from. However, meat producers in Canada and Mexico didn't like that, so they challenged the requirement in the WTO.
On November 18, the WTO ruled against our COOL labels. Canada and Mexico want the U.S. to return to voluntary COOL labels.
Discussion.
The WTO rules against consumer-protection legislation 90% of the time. It is increasingly clear (even if it wasn't clear way back in 1999 when activists temporarily shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle) that the WTO puts the interests of international trade and multinational corporations ahead of the interests of society. Of course, that's what the international trade treaties themselves are designed to do.
This leads to the question, "who wrote those treaties, anyway?" It should come as no surprise that corporate insiders and lobbyists are present, while representatives of the public are excluded, when these treaties are written. The most recent example is the secret Trans-Pacific trade talks. The current text is secret, and the Obama administration refuses to let the public know what is being negotiated on its behalf (yeah, right). See "Worldwide campaign to release the text" on this page.
The bottom line is, even in those rare instances where Congress, against the interests of corporations, passes some mild consumer-protection legislation, the WTO will often overturn it. If that isn't corporate rule, I don't know what is. This shows what happens when corporate dollars are allowed pervert our electoral process. This also demonstrates that corporate elites in all countries control their country's trade agendas.
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch has lots more info here and here.
For further reading, (and, in my opinion, one of the best books I've ever read) see "When Corporations Rule the World" by David Korten.