“The year 2009 will go down in history as a moment of great global insecurity. Millions of citizens lost their jobs. Many more lost their savings. Many of the development gains of the last decade vanished”–so began the 7th World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland on November 30th. Days earlier, CNN reported dozens of arrests, as the Black Bloc in Geneva allegedly burned 4 cars and vandalized several buildings in anticipation of the conference.

There seems to be an inflamed sense of urgency in shaping the future of international trade. The critically-despised Doha round, which many oppose for fear that United States-like countries would more easily exploit the developing world, has picked up steam once again: “the single largest adjustment we need to make is to conclude the Doha Round successfully and soon…time is running out,” warned the Director -General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, at the conference.

The Doha Round would essentially expand the WTO, not simply reform it, and this is particularly troubling considering the public holds no democratic power over them. Part of the reason for the WTO’s recent thrust to push through the Doha round may be due to the fragile state of…

…the global economy, but it can also be attributed to trade reform competition.

Earlier this year, Congressman Mike Michaud (D-MA) reintroduced The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment Act (The Trade Act) to the House of Representatives, where it is currently being considered by two committees. The bill directly challenges tactics of the WTO’s previous agreements, such as NAFTA and CAFTA, by requiring the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to oversee trade negotiations. As of now, the WTO has little-to-no oversight. Under the new legislation the GAO would also have to “report on how the current pacts measure up against the bill’s listing of what must and must not be included in future U.S. trade agreements.”

In a recent press conference, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptor (D-OH) connected the failures of WTO trade agreements with job loss in the United States:  “the deterioration in our nation’s trade accounts parallels the decline in our economy. We have not had balance in our trade accounts since 1973. It is not a coincidence that the rise in the trade deficit mirrors the loss of manufacturing jobs.”

Evidence supporting her claim can be found in a report done by the Economic Policy Institute, which concluded that 1,015,291 jobs were lost in the US due to the trade deficit of Canada and Mexico since the signing of NAFTA in 1993.  Another criticism of the agreement is that it’s “one size fits all” approach  does not take into account the economic inabilities of the third world to fairly participate, let alone compete, with the enormous budgets fortuned by countries like the United States and Great Britain.

It is in light of these realities that the Trade Act has been proposed, as has said Lori Wallach, Director of the Global Trade Watch Division of Public Citizen (a non-profit organization): “it is the path to replacing NAFTA and WTO, and making sure that trade globalization policy can work.”

So far the bill has 131 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, where it will need 241 votes in order to move on to the Senate—if and when it ever survives the sloth-like efficiency rate of the committee phase. This is, however, quite an improvement from last year, when the bill had a meager 6 co-sponsors.

Meanwhile, the world public is caught in the middle of this reform race. The Battle of Seattle’s 10th anniversary ignited a global buzz concerning the current state of the WTO. Many of those who participated in the (in)famous Seattle protests, which succeeded in shutting down a WTO conference in 1999, used Portland, OR as its launch pad this time around. A march-and-rally of 1 and 2 thousand was held; however, with no meeting to shut down, the day’s events appeared to be aimlessly proactive, though informative, and its numbers were dwarfed by the 50,000-plus who showed up in Seattle.

With the WTO hoping to finalize the Doha round and Congressman Michaud’s hope to pass the Trade Act, 2010 is shaping up to be an enormously pivotal year for international trade. And considering that the policies of the WTO extend far beyond that of trade, the ensuing changes could become even more significant. Inevitably, one of two will have to fail.

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