Linked with Lori Wallach – USA, with Why Does the WTO Want My Water?, and with The Public Citizen. Also linked with Third World Traveler, and with Michael Parenti – USA.
Global Trade Watch was created in 1995 as a division of the U.S.-based NGO Public Citizen that monitors the WTO and other trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA. Like Public Citizen in general, GTW advocates for a greater public role in international, federal, state and local policy-making, and for a different set of policies and institutions that govern the current model of globalization, according to its website. [See Public Citizen].
Its director and founder is trade lawyer and activist Lori Wallach. Wallach has been compared to « Ralph Nader with a sense of humor » in a Wall Street Journal profile, dubbed « the Trade Debate’s Guerrilla Warrior » by the National Journal,[see the Journalism School] and « a key player in Washington debates on trade policy » by The Nation. [See commondreams].
Senior staff at GTW in addition to Wallach are listed as including Mary Bottari as Harmonization Project Director; David Edeli as Senior Organizer; Deborah James as WTO Program Director; Chris Slevin as Deputy Director; and Todd Tucker as Research Director. [See Public Citizen].
The U.S.-based GTW is different than Global Trade Watch (Australia), an organization of the same name but with no formal affiliation. [See Global Trade Watch].
Mission Statement: GTW was created in 1995 to promote government and corporate accountability in the globalization and trade arena. Having built unique substantive capacity and diverse contacts with other public interest organizations, the press and policy-makers, GTW is one of the few progressive U.S. organizations focused full-time on globalization issues. We have become a leader in promoting a public interest perspective on an array of globalization issues, including implications for our food, health and safety, environmental protection, economic justice, and democratic, accountable governance. (See all above and much more on wikipedia).
Read: The WTO’s Slow Motion Coup Against Democracy, An Interview with Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Multinational Monitor, October/November 1999, on ThirdWorldTraveler.
Read also: House Committee on Ways and Means, Statement of Lori Wallach.