Take for example the use of anti-dumping action in the United States. Anti-dumping is a particularly effective form of discrimination because it claims to target only cheats in the trade game. It is also among the forms of discriminatory policies explicity allowed under the WTO framework. There is a reason for this. Originally, anti-dumping was designed as a means of protecting consumers from predatory pricing by large foreign monopolies. In practice, anti-dumping laws tend to protect American companies from foreign competition. To ensure access to American markets, America's protectionists had to be convinced competition from abroad wouldnot eat into their market share.

Consider for example the methods used by the department of commerce to prove predatory intent in anti-dumping cases. The "constructed value" method determines whether or not the US sales price fails to cover the average cost of production. First, the average variable cost of production in the exporting country is calculated. A 10 per cent mark-up is then added for general sales and administration costs. On top of this an additional 8 per cent margin is added for profits. Any foreign exporter who earns less than 18 per cent above his average variable costs will be found guilty of dumping, even though he may only be meeting the price prevailing in the US market. So any firm that is efficient enough to keep costs to less than 10 per cent of variable costs or satisfies itself with less than 8 per cent profit to meet US prices will be found guilty of dumping. In contrast, under the Areeda-Turner (1975) doctrine of anti-trust legislation, a firm that sets prices at or aboveaverage variable cost cannot be found guilty of selling at predatory prices.

The department of commerce compares the average selling price in the exporter's country to the price at which each sale is made in the United States. So even if the average sale price in the United States is equal to the average price in the exporter's country and even one sale was made below this price, the department files the transaction as dumped for calculating the dumping margin.

There is then the concept of de minimis injury. This clause was inserted explicitly to protect domestic producer lobbies from losing market share to foreign compietition. It is enough for a firm to show sales are being affected by imports to invite anti-dumping duties.

Dumping duties are ridiculously easy to obtain. In the last two decades 80 per cent of all anti-dumping claims in America were successful. Once imposed, they are rarely removed. An anti-dumping order imposed on Canadian steel jacks in September 1966 is still in effect. They alsotend to be very large. The average size of the anti-dumping order in America is 57 per cent of the price, a huge margin by any standard.

Other instances of nations' self-interests colouring WTO trade regulations abound. Agriculture still has to find itself a trade policy. Negotiations are due to start in 1999. In the Uruguay round of the General agreement for Trade & Tariff (Gatt), talks floundered over European objections to proposals. This largely rose from French farming interests. The large French farming lobby was able to hold the French government to ransom, holding out for larger tariffs and concessions. It was agreed to "gradually" bring textiles and agriculture under lthe framework of WTO rules. This was held as a triumph of trade diplomacy at the time, even though protection remained at much the same levels. America imposes a 132 per cent tariff on peanut butter imports, and Japan imposes a 515 per cent tariff on rice.

The US is now threatening retaliatory action against tariffs in produce itdoes not really trade in. In case of bananas, the dispute arose out of Europe's guaranteed access to the fruit from former European colonies in Africa. This affects the market for Latin American bananas. In turn, this action affects the fortunes of American companies such as Chiquita. Carl Lindner, chairman of Chiquita, counts on support from political heavyweights like Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott (the House majority leader in the US Congress), Richard Gephardt (the Democrat House leader in the Congress).

Under such a framework of narrow national interests, the WTO does not have the power to enforce it's rulings. If the United States decides to not abide by a ruling, the other country is free to impose sanctions on the United States. So even if India went to the WTO on US sanctions and we won our case, it would still not amount to much, because the best we could do will be to impose sanctions on the United States, hardly a wise strategy.

It remains far from clear India could win its case. Under WTO rules,most-favoured nation (MFN) status and national treatment rules can be exempted on national security concerns. If America wanted to tell its companies not to deal with Indian companies, that's just fine with the WTO. Last year, the imposition of sanctions under the Helms-Burton rules was legal under the WTO rules as long as only American firms were prevented from doing business with Cuba. It became Gatt-illegal only when the US tried to force European firms from dealing with Cuba also. Unless the United States prevents others from trading with India, they are quite entitled to do what they please. They wrote the rules.