LAT: Wal-Mart Hopes WTO Will Help It Open a Door

[DeepModem Mom]

Wal-Mart Hopes WTO Will Help It Open a Door
Big retailers will seek to alter a services pact. Local officials fear a loss of power to limit firms.
By Evelyn Iritani, Times Staff Writer


Union leaders, politicians and anti-globalization activists have used the courts and zoning laws to keep big-box stores like Wal-Mart out of their neighborhoods.

Now the Bentonville, Ark.-based retail giant and other major chains are hoping to counterattack with a powerful new weapon: the World Trade Organization....

This week, those retailers will head to Hong Kong to try to persuade negotiators to fashion a trade pact that would make it more difficult for governments to restrict foreign-owned stores, banks and telecommunications companies.

These retailers say they are not making a back-door attempt to undo various countries' laws. They say they are simply trying to get rid of protectionist barriers, such as size and geographic restrictions, that have unfairly hindered their growth, particularly in emerging markets such as China and India....

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But critics....fear that the proposals to change the WTO's 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services would make it easier to attack dozens of U.S. laws designed to restrict the growth of big-box retailers. That agreement was designed to open up trade in services such as retailing, accounting, medicine and entertainment that weren't covered under previous trade pacts....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wto12dec12,0,27426.story?coll=la-home-business

[bleedingheart]

1. Wal-Mart funding the Red Army since 1962

[Daphne08]

2. This is scary. Just plain scary. n/t

[bvar22]

3. The global behemoths ROLL ON!

The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

In EVERY case, "Barriers to Trade" and "Restrictions on Corporations" were created to protect something valuable!


"NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFTA----Stephanie Tubbs-Jones

[wordpix]

4. about the WTO: pro corporations and very powerful

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wto/