He said, "My warning goes out to all citizens that human beings are in an endangered situation. That uncontrolled multinational corporations and a small number of big WTO Members are leading an undesirable globalization that is inhumane, environmentally degrading, farmer-killing, and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately." ........and then he plunged a knife into his heart.

Suicide at WTO Meeting Highlights Farmers' Plight

Lee's lament goes to the heart of what is perhaps the single most contentious issue in international trade today.

Free-market advocates argue that agricultural producers who can grow crops most efficiently--that is, at the lowest cost--should be permitted to export to other markets without tariffs or other trade-distorting barriers, such as farm subsidies in the importing country, in order to keep global food prices low and as affordable to as many people as possible.

Instead of trying to compete with low-cost producers, according to this view, farmers in other countries who produce the same crop at higher cost should either grow something else at which they will have a similar competitive advantage or give up farming altogether and move to the city where they can get a job in a manufacturing or some other sector whose products or services can be sold to yet other markets at competitive prices.

This "neo-liberal" philosophy, which guides the WTO and other institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that oversee the global economy, is precisely what brought Lee to Cancun and ultimately to his death.