| Concerns of developing
countries already members or wanting to join the WTO generally revolve around
the results of opening up their markets to more developed countries. Will developing
countries get enough trade in return for opening their markets? Can they only
economically lose to more powerful countries more able to rapidly take advantage
of a trade situation? Or will they be overwhelmed by foreign products and companies?
Opening up markets may mean that smaller or traditional economic activities lose
out to larger corporations, especially those backed by foreign funding and able
to penetrate markets faster than small locally trading businesses. Thought
the WTO agreements are theoretically supposed to ‘level the playing field’,
countries that are richer have an advantage that comes from a longer history of
international trading. Rich countries have the ability to put more manpower and
technical resources into negotiating and can back trade with military power or
the withdrawal of aid. A valid fear also is that the more developed countries
are economic powers that may back their industrial and agriculture interests with
subsidies. Then there are certain other trade-related moral issues. For
example, should the WTO deal with labour standards? Such standards are obviously
connected with trade, and workers in developing countries could be suffering because
their labour laws, such as those dealing with child labour, are weaker than those
of western countries. Yet developing countries may fear that labour standards
can be used as a form of protectionism, harming their exporters. However, others
point out that the UN’s International Labour Organisation exists to deal
with such debates and it is not within the WTO’s remit to tackle such problems.
Similar problems exist with environmental standards. Another area that
is troublesome to developing nations is the TRIPS Agreement. The criticism is
that it may be impossible for poor nations to develop their own industries independently
since richer countries can claim most ideas come from their generic research.
A further problem that many NGOs are worried about is that indigenous knowledge
can be ‘patented’ by large companies just because they have the money
and manpower to take cases to court. The WTO
has always been concerned about development, and from the beginning its aim has
been to bring developing countries to the negotiating table. The Doha Development
Agenda, decided at the ministerial conference in Doha , is an attempt to meet
developing country demands. But as an institution, the WTO can only deal with
and respond to the concerns of its member state governments, not bring them up
on its own. The WTO just makes sure that governments of as many countries as
possible attend negotiations and agree to a particular set of trading rules. The
rules themselves are decided by the governments, not the WTO. | 
