Liam Fox is fulsome in his praise of the benefits of free trade (Britain must champion the poverty-busting power of trade, 11 December). But we have learnt in recent decades that trade doesn’t always benefit everyone, particularly when institutions like the World Trade Organisation force countries to give up powers they could use to regulate big business. The WTO has worked well for big business, much less so for the global poor.

This week Britain could speak up for different WTO rules that, for instance, would allow countries like India to provide subsidised food to address poverty. Instead, Fox will champion a whole set of “new issues” being included in WTO rules, like e-commerce, which in reality is a charter for big tech companies like Google and Amazon to use and abuse our data at will. Trade rules must change if they’re to survive the age of Trump-style nationalism. The first step is democracy and accountability. But here, Fox falls short. He has not spoken out about the banning of some British citizens (including myself) from Argentina for the WTO summit. Neither does his trade bill currently in parliament give any scope for the public or parliament to shape the trade deals we do post-Brexit.

Nick Dearden

Director, Global Justice Now

• We are deeply concerned that the Argentinian government has deported Sally Burch (Argentina deports British journalist ahead of WTO conference, theguardian.com, 9 December). This follows them banning British NGOs Global Justice Now, Friends of the Earth, and dozens of international experts who were accredited by the WTO to attend the ministerial summit in Buenos Aires.

The move represents a gross violation of the principles of plurality and democracy. Yet it also has direct implications for British citizens. On the very morning of his ban, Global Justice director Nick Dearden gave oral evidence to parliament’s international trade committee on the UK’s government’s trade bill. If the UK fails to agree a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, it will revert to WTO terms, making this year’s summit a crucial forum for UK public policy.

Further, banning journalists and external civil society organisations follows the same authoritarian logic that President Macri’s government is applying in its internal affairs in its persecution of political opponents.The indigenous Mapuche people face regular raids on their ancestral lands by state forces. This led to the recent killing of Rafael Nahuel and to the death of Santiago Maldonado which caught the attention of Amnesty International and the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.

Workers’ protests to defend their jobs under attack from Macri’s neoliberal programme are violently crushed and three days ago an opposition MP was even shot by police at one. Thursday’s court ruling called for ex-President Cristina Kirchner to be arrested for “high treason,” a charge that has never been used in Argentinian history, not even against the leaders of the 1976-83 military junta which disappeared 30,000 of their own citizens.

Dr Daniel Ozarow

Deputy head, Middlesex University Latin American Studies Research Group, Argentina Solidarity Campaign

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