Which is why the WTO’s powers are somewhat frightening, since it can override and nullify national laws on labor and environmental restrictions, claiming that they hurt a business’s ability to operate in that country.
Lemme put that another way. The United States could pass a law, overwhelmingly supported by its populace, requiring that increases in minimum wage be tied to the consumer price index–ensuring that as long as a person is working forty hours a week, they can afford to feed themselves and a child. The World Trade Organization could summarily overturn that law, if it deemed it sufficiently harmful to business interests, and neither U.S. legislators nor its courts nor its citizenry would have recourse to reinstate it. Good to know. :eek:
The WTO has NO such powers.
Keep on dreaming.
The only reason a India has so much shit happen
“The application of the structural adjustment programmes in India has brought no relief to the ordinary people, on the contrary. Even the modest agrarian reform applied has been suppressed. In two years, the number of unemployed in the cities has increased by four million. Out of the active rural population of 400 million, there are now 110 million unemployed. Traditional food production is being suppressed because it is not commercially viable. The land is used for agro-export and this leads to a contradiction: the number of calories produced in India has grown in the last few years, the number of calories consumed per head has diminished. The recent plague epidemic did not happen by chance. The restrictions in the refuse collection sector created the necessary conditions. Just try to think, what kind of disastrous thing might happen if this epidemic had broken out some years later, by which time the health sector will be completely privatised?”"
what adjustment programs?
Prove that such adjustment programs exist. You don’t think it could be just because THERE ARE FUCKING 1BN PEOPLE IN INDIA
“I shot the sherrif, I shot the deputy too. No, it wasn’t in self defense. They both looked at me cockeyed so I capped 'em. Then I shot the mayor, then the firechief, decapitated the librarian, impaled the dog catcher, used a spoon to remove the groundskeepers eyes and sent the leader of the local KKK in full KKK uniform to downtown Manhattan. Then I made sweet love to the sexy 18 yr old intern, and it was all good.”
Are you stupid, or just a troll? I’m not going to even spend an ounce of time with the rest of your ridiculous statements. You might as well be asking for proof that the constitution exists.
On the WTO. The WTO does have such powers. They ruled that labeling tuna dolphin-safe was an unfair trade barrier. Here is a quote "Gasoline. In 1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency weakened its Clean Air Act regulations to comply with a WTO ruling barring U.S. limits on contaminants in imported foreign gasoline. Venezuela claimed that the limits, which affected California and eight other states, acted as an unfair trade barrier.
Endangered turtles. Last October, the WTO ruled against the U.S. ban on shrimp imports from nations whose fishing fleets do not use devices to keep endangered sea turtles out of the nets. The Clinton administration is revising its implementation of the Endangered Species Act to comply with the WTO ruling.
Dolphin-safe tuna. This fall, U.S. supermarkets will again sell tuna that is caught using mile-long nets blamed for snaring and killing thousands of dolphins per year. Last year, Congress weakened the Marine Mammal Protection Act to comply with a 1992 WTO ruling against the U.S. “dolphin-safe” tuna certification.
State purchasing. Two U.S. federal courts have ruled that Massachusetts’ ban on state contracts with firms doing business with Burma’s military dictatorship is an unconstitutional intrusion on the federal government’s foreign-policy powers. Massachusetts announced last week that it will appeal the rulings–in which the judges cited a complaint filed in the WTO by the European Union and Japan–to the Supreme Court, where it is expected to become a major test of federalism.
Jury awards. In October, Loewen Group, a large Canadian funeral corporation, filed a NAFTA lawsuit against the U.S. government, seeking $750 million in damages because of what it claimed was unfair treatment by a local jury in a Mississippi state court. In that case, Loewen had been convicted of fraudulently trying to corner the regional funeral market and was fined $500 million–but instead of appealing the case through the U.S. legal system, Loewen settled out of court and made an end run to NAFTA.
MTBE. The Vancouver-based Methanex Corp. filed a $970 million NAFTA lawsuit last month against California’s plan to ban MTBE, the gasoline additive that is blamed for polluting the state’s groundwater. A similar lawsuit filed last year by a U.S. company forced Canada to overturn its ban on a similar additive. "
So, Rhythmdvl: can I take your lack of response as an indication that you’ve considered the points we’ve raised and accepted them? 
Seriously, it’s been good debating with you.
As for Sip’n Fly…uh, yeah.
(we make a good team, oldscratch!)