July 26 is Cuba's national day, marking the beginning in 1956 of the struggle that led in 1959 to the overthrow of the US-backed Batista dictatorship and the opening of the first socialist revolution in the Americas. Despite four decades of US military and economic aggression, Cuba's revolution remains a ray of hope for the world's oppressed and therefore a thorn in the side of US imperialism. We present here, abridged, a speech by Cuban President FIDEL CASTRO attacking the United States' trade policies, given at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Multilateral Trade System, in Geneva on May 19.
Last March, the US government made public its Trade Policy Agenda for 1998, which indicated that its policy must be aggressive, globally direct and for all the regions of the world; that the United States is in a strong position to use its powers of persuasion and influence to pursue this agenda; and that despite the substantial number of markets that have been opened, there remain too many barriers to the export of US goods and services. Such language is disquieting.
In September 1995, upon the initiative of the United States, even though the World Trade Organisation already existed, composed of 132 member countries, talks began in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an exclusive First World club, to work out a Multilateral Agreement on Investment.
Due to problems related to the sovereignty of states, the subsequent idea of negotiating that agreement in the World Trade Organisation was strongly opposed at the ministerial conference held in Singapore in December 1996. However, the agreements reached there did not prevent the OECD from proceeding with elaboration of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment.
Attempts by the United States to introduce key aspects of the Helms-Burton Act in said agreement brought the negotiations to a standstill, leaving only the United States and Europe involved.
The above-mentioned act illustrates the steps taken by the United States in its economic war against Cuba. The extraterritorial nature of these and other measures led the European Union to request from the WTO the establishment of a special panel, which was approved on November 20, 1996.
Later, on April 11, 1997, an understanding was reached on the basis of certain US pledges associated with the implementation and modification of the Helms-Burton Act.
In an amazing and shrewd manoeuvre, the United States began to dictate new guidelines of international law within the framework of the OECD, in an attempt to insert retroactive stipulations in the Multilateral Agreement on Investment concerning the nationalisations conducted at the end of the 1950s, which it considers illegal.
That exactly coincides with the triumph of the revolution in Cuba, but this principle can also be applied to nationalisations in other countries after 1959. The intention is to internationalise the principles of the infamous Helms-Burton Act. That act has arbitrarily turned people who were Cuban citizens at the time of the expropriation into expropriated Americans.
Actually, the extraterritorial nature of the blockade had been in force long before that shameful law came into existence. The US government prevents all US companies, no matter where they are based, from trading with Cuba. That constitutes a violation of sovereignty.
The WTO should be capable of preventing economic genocide. Disputes between the United States and the European Union about this law should not be settled at Cuba's expense. The economic blockade has already cost Cuba US$60 billion.
In the last few years, the United States has approved over 40 laws and executive decisions to apply unilateral economic sanctions against 75 nations which represent 42% of the world population.
The United States obtained practically everything it wanted with the agreements leading to the establishment of the WTO, and particularly the General Agreement on Services. The same applies to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, a field where it holds a privileged control thanks to its technological development and systematic plundering of the best minds in the world.
The United States also has the singular privilege of issuing the currency used for the majority of convertible currency reserves in the central banks and deposits in commercial banks around the world. Although it is the nation whose citizens save the least, its transnational companies are buying up the world's riches with the money saved by people in other countries and with currency printed without the gold backing agreed upon in Bretton Woods.
Therefore, if the Euro emerges as a strong and prestigious currency, it's quite welcome!
New themes introduced in the WTO's agenda by the wealthy countries are threatening a reduction of the developing countries' competitive possibilities, under already difficult conditions fraught with inequalities, which will certainly be used as pretexts for non-tariff barriers or for preventing their commodities from having access to markets.
The Third World countries have been losing everything: tariffs that protected their emerging industries and generated revenues; agreements on basic commodities; producers' associations; price indexing; preferential treatment; any instrument protecting the value of their exports and contributing to their development. What are we left with?
Why aren't the unfair and unequal terms of trade mentioned? Why is the unbearable weight of the external debt no longer discussed? Why is official development aid being reduced? If every developed country did like Norway, the Third World would annually have US$200 billion for its development. Norway should be imitated!
How are we supposed to make a living? What goods and services shall we export? Which industrial products will be left to us? Only those which are low technology and labour intensive, and that pollute heavily? Might this be an attempt to turn a large part of the Third World into an immense duty-free zone?
Why is the strongest economic power in the world obstructing China's access to the WTO? Why does it block the admission of Russia and other countries? No nation, big or small, can or should be left out of this important institution, or subject to humiliating conditions.
We developing countries must not allow them to divide us. Unity is the only wealth we possess, the only guarantee in the defence of our legitimate aspirations.
Those of us who were colonies yesterday and are still enduring the consequences of backwardness, poverty and underdevelopment are the majority within this organisation. We should turn this organisation into an instrument in the struggle for a more just and better world.
Amid so much euphoria, no-one can be sure of how long the United States, ruled by the blind laws of the market economy, can keep the financial bubble from bursting.
The absurdly inflated prices on the stock markets of that economy cannot be sustained. The problem is that now a big crisis would go global and have unthinkable consequences. Not even those of us who are adversaries of the prevailing system wish that to happen.
It would be worthwhile for the WTO to assess these risks and include another issue among the so-called new themes: "Global Economic Crisis. What To Do?"