Blaikie emerged as a prominent critic of economic globalization during the mid-1990s. In 1996, he wrote that new rules governing the World Trade Organization would shift oversight of public policy from elected governments to unelected trade bureaucrats. He expressed similar concerns about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment two years later, arguing that it put the rights of investors ahead of workers, environments, societies, and cultures. He wrote the NDP Minority Report on the MAI, which was published in "Dismantling Democracy" (edited by Andrew Jackson and Matthew Sanger).