The Secret Side of Free Trade – Ralph Nader in 1994

TUC Radio’s 30th Anniversary Celebration – ARCHIVE
Looking back over the last three decades and trying to understand the heating of the climate and the melting glaciers and the poisoning of all waters and the air; and when hard pressed to put it all into one sentence I used to say that the worlds largest corporations re-wrote the rules of international globalized trade that accelerated mining and manufacturing and transport and fuel extraction and led to climate collapse and concentrated power in very few hands.

In the 1990s I worked as radio producer with the IFG, The International Forum on Globalization. They pointed out that the globalized trade rules of the GATT and the WTO fundamentally limited rights and power of peoples of all member states, and even restricted the decision making powers of their governments.

At the IFG I met some extraordinary activists, economists, scholars, and researchers among them Ralph Nader who has never stopped his fight against corporate power and who I still follow now – 30 years later – on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

Here is his 1994 analysis of the impact of global trade agreements such as the WTO on each member country’s laws, democracy and environment – even on powerful countries such as the US.

The program ends with a clip by Noam Chomsky on global trade organized by what he calls the “New World Order Inc. – the global economy and the demise of democracy.”

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TUC Radio’s 30th Anniversary Celebration – ARCHIVE
Looking back over the last three decades and trying to understand the heating of the climate and the melting glaciers and the poisoning of all waters and the air; and when hard pressed to put it all into one sentence I used to say that the worlds largest corporations re-wrote the rules of international globalized trade that accelerated mining and manufacturing and transport and fuel extraction and led to climate collapse and concentrated power in very few hands.

In the 1990s I worked as radio producer with the IFG, The International Forum on Globalization. They pointed out that the globalized trade rules of the GATT and the WTO fundamentally limited rights and power of peoples of all member states, and even restricted the decision making powers of their governments.

At the IFG I met some extraordinary activists, economists, scholars, and researchers among them Ralph Nader who has never stopped his fight against corporate power and who I still follow now – 30 years later – on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

Here is his 1994 analysis of the impact of global trade agreements such as the WTO on each member country’s laws, democracy and environment – even on powerful countries such as the US.

The program ends with a clip by Noam Chomsky on global trade organized by what he calls the “New World Order Inc. – the global economy and the demise of democracy.”

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