WTO has been an agency of redistribution since inception.
They made a fallacious distinction between a direct tax and an indirect tax that has served to disadvantage US business for more than 30 years. It's a technical point that served as the subject of my MS Tax thesis.
When you consider that the US has the highest Corporate Net Income tax rate in the OECD, and the WTO has repeatedly refused to allow us to "border adjust" the burden from exported goods, it's a frank miracle that we have any jobs left in this country.
Many erroneously identify "free trade" as the enemy. It's not....keeps us fighting amongst ourselves. The indirect/direct distinction between the tax systems of Europe and the CNI of the US...is the reason we are so disadvantaged in the world market. Here's a synopsis of the problem: http://www.iie.com/publications/opeds/oped.cfm?ResearchID=197
Thank you for the information about exports, trade, and the direct v. indirect tax dispute. Your link and another one I found to help me understand provided me with a clue why a law passed on October 22, 2004 was called
The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004
I saw nothing in reports covering the new law about jobs. There was the repeal of "export subsidies" in response to the WTO and the temporary reduction of taxes on repatriated earnings. Actually, the repeal of "export subsidies" (so defined by the WTO) hurts our exports and reduces job opportunities -- and most corporations intended to use their repatriated earnings for everything but jobs. I'm still wondering where Jobs Creation figures in.
One Internet source discussing the direct v. indirect tax dispute and the WTO interference said "If the American people understood this dispute, and the effect on jobs, there would be rioting in the streets."
So we have been conditioned to bow to the WTO regardless of the impact on ourselves. It's just the beginning. I've been reading about a growing demand that the WTO move beyond just trade and get into managing "social justice."
The New Democrat Third Way "progressives" and their Third Way comrades around the world (Including Blair. Blinton?) have only to ask their corporate useful idiots to please make lots of rope, preferably outsourced offshore, thank you.