X-Post from GD: DU This Survey: Tell the WTO What You Think About World Trade

Link to survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/82CBQCS

Link to AFL-CIO Blog about the survey: http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/What-Do-You-Think-About-Trade-The-WTO-Wants-to-Hear-from-You

Excerpt from AFL-CIO Blog about the survey:

Unfortunately, trade policies at the WTO actually make it harder for governments to act in the public interest by restricting what choices societies can make about economic governance. There are rules that could restrict the ability to react to financial crises and might prevent governments from requiring that contractors provide local, living-wage jobs. Extreme patent restrictions benefit pharmaceutical companies at the expense of those struggling to pay for life-saving medicines and rules limiting “technical barriers to trade” have been used to attack such basic consumer protections as country of origin and dolphin-safe tuna labels.

Taken together, the WTO rules, as a whole, benefit global corporations at the expense of workers everywhere. They enable powerful economic interests to use the rules to their advantage to push wages down and to limit policy choices that prevent corporations from doing as they please. In short, they put profits over people. Though some reap great benefits from the current skewed model of trade, we all pay the price in more dangerous workplaces, fewer social protections, dirtier air and water and governments that are less responsive to their citizens than they are to global capital.

Let the WTO know it’s time to end these harmful policies and develop trade rules that are designed to promote shared prosperity by increasing employment, raising social standards and protecting the environment.

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Give the WTO a piece of your mind (well, as large a piece as you can give without a free response portion)!!!