As thousands gather for a global summit in Geneva, just weeks after some countries launched talks on “e-commerce” policies, more than 300 groups from around the world warn governments of serious dangers and urge them to instead focus on transforming global trade rules for shared prosperity for all

This article by Deborah James appeared on Common Dreams April 3rd, 2019.

A brief commentary by Community Rights US Director and founder Paul Cienfuegos: It continues to amaze me how the global corporate elite are always many steps ahead of citizens’ movements, always plotting to expand corporate “rights” in any direction they desire, while We The People keep battling one corporate harm at a time, endlessly, and usually via the regulatory agencies and regulatory laws, which are themselves corporate turf. That’s why I’m so active in the Community Rights movement, where we’re learning how to tackle corporate power structurally, for a change!

On Monday of this week, 315 civil society organizations (CSOs)—including global union federations, development advocates, consumer organizations, and environmental groups—from more than 90 countries delivered a letter (available in English, Spanish, and French in PDF) to members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In it, they express their “profound and urgent opposition to these proposed negotiations which, if concluded, could result in the full liberalization of the entire (digital) economy, and thus represent back door attempt to achieve a ‘WTO 2.0’.”

The WTO membership rejected displacing the “development agenda” in the WTO for a new agenda on digital trade at the last Ministerial meeting in December 2017 in Argentina. In spite of this, a number of countries decided to launch negotiations in March 2019.

The intent—as advocated for by Big Tech industry groups—is to rewrite the rules of the global economy in a way that would give them, the largest corporations in the world, new “rights” to profit—while limiting public interest oversight and benefits from the new economy for everyone else—by commencing new negotiations on “e-commerce” in the WTO. The rules proposed by Big Tech transnational corporations (TNCs) go far beyond “e-commerce” and have implications for all aspects of domestic as well as the global economy, even for countries not participating.

Read the rest of this article at its original source HERE.