After Seattle
Can developing countries, labor unions, environmentalists, and anarchists get
together to overturn the corporate new world order?
San Francisco Bay Guardian(December 15, 1999)
By Daniel Zoll
THE TENS OF thousands of protesters who took over the streets of Seattle
weren't the only dissenters at the World Trade Organization's conference. The
day before the meeting collapsed, a group of trade ministers from developing
countries stormed into the WTO pressroom and held an impromptu briefing. They
complained that the United States and its wealthy allies had hijacked the
negotiating process and were cutting secret deals in the corridors.
"This should not be a game about enhancing corporate profits," said Sonny
Ramphal, chief negotiator for Caribbean countries. "This should not be a time
when big countries, strong countries, the world's wealthiest countries, are
setting about a process designed to enrich themselves."
By the last day of the conference, ministers representing a majority of the
WTO's member states, mostly from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean,
had signed statements in which they blasted the process and refused to join
any consensus.
While many factors contributed to the failure of the talks, the WTO's lack of
transparency -- or "sunshine," as we like to say in San Francisco -- was a
major one. United States Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, who
presided over the dysfunctional negotiations, admitted as much in her final
press conference. "An increasing and necessary view, generally shared among
the members, was that we needed a process which had a greater degree of
internal transparency and inclusion," she said.
Developing countries have long complained that they have been sidelined in
trade talks by the WTO's secretive "green room" process, in which the real
decisions are made by wealthy nations outside of the formal negotiations. But
this time the revolt of the third world ministers was bolstered by the shouts
of the throngs of people outside -- people who had very similar things to say
about WTO secrecy and the influence of special interests.
It was that chorus of dissent -- the combined voices of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), developing countries, and labor unions -- that made
history in Seattle. Now that the tear gas has cleared, the dissenters are
trying to build on their fragile coalition and articulate an alternative
vision for the global economy.
"The ascendancy of a narrow set of business interests over all other
interests of society must be reversed," reads a Dec. 3 declaration signed by
NGOs from around the world. "We must all engage in a broader search for a
democratic, humane, and sustainable international system."
Tough task
Such calls for reform are nothing new. And the rifts among the WTO's critics
are profound -- for example, over how labor and environmental standards
should be maintained, what protest tactics should be employed (see "Leftists
Shouldn't Call In the Cops" and "Window-Smashing Hurt Our Cause,"), and
whether the WTO itself should be reformed or scrapped. The task of
determining a post-Seattle strategy is a formidable one.
But the events of the past few weeks open up the possibility of far-reaching
change in the WTO and in the global economic architecture. For the first
time, "civil society" -- a phrase now commonly used to describe the broad
spectrum of NGOs -- has taken center stage in the debate. As Mark Ritchie of
the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy told us,
"Wholesale reform or restructuring of the entire system is now much more
likely in the aftermath of the WTO's organizational failure in Seattle."
On a national level, Medea Benjamin of San Francisco-based Global Exchange
says, the challenge is to make fair trade and corporate globalization an
issue in electoral campaigns, especially in the upcoming presidential race.
Another goal is to block congressional approval of China's entry into the
WTO.
Activists are also planning a repeat performance of the Battle of Seattle
when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank meet in Washington,
D.C. in April.
"If you can take an acronym like WTO that meant nothing to average Americans
a few weeks ago and now it's a household word, why can't you transfer that to
another secretive, undemocratic institution like the IMF?" Benjamin asks.
A popular picket sign in Seattle bore the message "Turtles and Teamsters:
United at Last." And indeed, the long-term success of the Seattle coalition
depends in large part on whether organized labor and environmentalists can
find common ground on trade issues. Katie Quan of UC Berkeley's Center for
Labor Research and Education told us the two camps should try to formalize
the alliances formed in Seattle. "The dialogue has just begun," she said.
"What's good about the WTO activity is that both sides began to see there is
a future in developing formal coalitions."
The battle of Seattle is just the latest in a string of improbable victories
for what some have referred to as a global pro-democracy movement: One year
to the day before the WTO talks collapsed, an international network of
activists derailed an investment-liberalization treaty proposed for the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The backlash against
genetically engineered foods is picking up speed in the United States.
Although there will be no new round of global trade talks, at least for the
time being, the WTO is forging ahead with ongoing negotiations that were
built into its schedule at the end of the Uruguay Round in 1994. Activists
working on narrow issues from food safety to forests are now looking to the
broader anticorporate globalization coalition to support their causes. Here
are a few of those issues and where they stand:
Food safety
Frustrated by European efforts to block U.S. companies from exporting
genetically modified foods, the United States wants to bring biotechnology
under the aegis of the business-friendly WTO. Going into Seattle, the
European Union had opposed such a move, but during the conference E.U.
representatives stunned activists by reversing their position and agreeing to
the immediate establishment of a biotechnology "working group" at the WTO.
Critics say putting biotechnology within the purview of the WTO could limit
governments' ability to block or label genetically modified food products.
The reversal immediately caused a crisis in Europe. Fearing the political
backlash, 15 E.U. environment ministers immediately issued a joint statement
expressing opposition to their trade delegation's negotiating position.
Meanwhile, Washington wants to bar WTO member governments from regulating
genetically engineered food under the "precautionary principle." Currently,
governments can ban products whose safety has not been established --
including genetically modified crops and beef fattened with hormones. The
United States says products should be allowed unless science proves
conclusively that they are harmful.
What's next: Since the Seattle talks collapsed, there will be no biotech
working group at the WTO for the time being. Activists predict the issue is
about to explode in the United States. On Dec. 13 the biggest U.S.
demonstration against "Frankenfoods" yet was held at a Food and Drug
Administration hearing in Oakland.
The FDA is accepting written comments on its biotech policies until Jan. 13.
For more information, and to send a letter urging the agency to require the
labeling of genetically engineered foods, go to the Center for Food Safety's
Web site, at www.foodsafetynow.org.
Forests
Global timber companies, which have already profited greatly from trade and
investment liberalization, are trying to use the WTO to further tear down
barriers to their operations. Even as President Bill Clinton pledged in
Seattle that "the environment should be at the core of all trade concerns,"
his trade negotiators were moving forward with a "global free logging
agreement" -- a tariff-elimination plan that would increase wood consumption
worldwide. The proposed agreement would also threaten ecolabeling plans,
protections against invasive species, and bans on the export of raw logs. The
administration publicly dismissed activists' concerns in Seattle and refused
to consider the environmental impacts of the proposed tariff liberalization.
What's next: With the collapse of the round, the global free logging
agreement is delayed for now. But activists fear that other pending WTO
negotiations, such as those covering agriculture, could threaten forests. For
example, if Europe agrees to open up its soybean markets, Brazil -- one of
the world's largest soybean producers -- will step up the conversion of
forests to soybean plantations.
Services
The WTO may still be moving toward an agreement that could lead to an assault
on public sector services including education, health care, and water. The
U.S. Coalition of Service Industries, drooling over the prospect of unimpeded
access to foreign markets, has been feverishly lobbying to ensure that health
care is included in the negotiations on the WTO's General Agreement on Trade
in Services (GATS). The United States has confirmed that health care is on
the table at the WTO. If enacted, new service rules at the WTO could be used
to force Canada and European countries, for example, to turn over public
health care services to foreign corporations.
And the private companies that have already made inroads into public
education in the United States want a piece of the pie too. They're pushing
to have education included in the GATS negotiations.
At a press briefing in Seattle Dec. 2, consumer advocate Ralph Nader
predicted that health care and education would be the next targets for the
WTO. "The corporations see a huge business in converting public health system
dollars into corporatized marketplace dollars, and they're talking about
hundreds of billions of dollars," Nader said.
Environmentalists also fear that corporations will try to exploit the world
water crisis by using the WTO to privatize public water systems. Under WTO
rules, any bans on the export of water, including those imposed for
environmental purposes, are open to challenge as a form of protectionism.
What's next: The collapse of the round had little impact on services, since
the GATS negotiations are already a part of the WTO's agenda. Talks on
services are set to resume in Geneva in January.
Investment
Transnational corporations have long called for a global agreement that would
protect their overseas investments. Last year an international coalition of
grassroots groups blocked an attempt to negotiate a so-called Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI). Since then, the E.U. and Japan have been
pushing to revive elements of the MAI at the WTO.
The MAI would have provided transnational corporations with tools to tear
down government regulations on investments -- including environmental and
labor protections, local contracting preferences, and affirmative action
programs.
Going into the Seattle meeting, the United States was lukewarm about
including investment talks in a new round. Since the collapse of the MAI, it
has been wary of trying to get consensus at the WTO and now favors a strategy
of negotiating bilateral investment agreements.
What's next: The failure of the talks has stalled, at least temporarily,
negotiations on including MAI-style investment measures in the WTO. However,
the United States' efforts to cut individual investment deals with other
countries could be equally damaging.
Agriculture
The existing WTO trade rules are already stacked against small farmers and
food safety. They are designed to promote corporate monopoly control of
agriculture, allow corporations to dump agricultural products on world
markets at below the cost of production, and prevent governments from taking
steps to protect and encourage family farms and to discourage
industrial-style production. The rules also threaten labeling schemes, such
as those identifying organic foods. Ongoing negotiations set to resume in
January threaten to make matters worse.
"These things are killing the farmers here and overseas," IATP's Ritchie
says. "There is a very strong incentive to get in there in Geneva in January
and try to turn these rules around."
What's next: Agriculture talks are set to resume in Geneva in January.
Access to drugs
On behalf of the pharmaceutical industry, the U.S. government has been using
the WTO to bully countries that try to make medicines, including AIDS drugs,
more affordable. The Clinton administration has repeatedly tried to block
developing countries from implementing programs that provide lower-cost
drugs, even though such programs are permitted under WTO
intellectual-property rules.
In response to sustained pressure from AIDS activists and other health care
advocates, Clinton announced in Seattle that the U.S. government would change
its trade policy to support greater access to life-saving medicines.
"It's a victory in principle," Eric Sawyer, founding member of ACT-UP New
York, told the Bay Guardian. "Now we need to ensure that it actually results
in individuals getting quicker access to essential medicines."
What's next: According to Jamie Love of the Washington, D.C.-based Consumer
Project on Technology, the United States is still in dispute with more than
40 countries over intellectual-property issues related to health. Activists
will watch to see if the United States follows through with its new policy
and lifts trade pressures on those countries.
Trade advisory committees
In a pre-Seattle victory for environmentalists, on Nov. 9 a federal district
court judge ordered U.S. Trade Representative Barshefsky to name at least one
representative from the environmental community to the two panels that advise
her on international trade in wood and paper products. By limiting those
panels to industry officials, the court ruled, Barshefsky had been violating
the Federal Advisory Council Act, which requires that the advisory panels
represent a "fair balance" of viewpoints.
What's next: A coalition of environmental and consumer groups, including the
Bay Area-based Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund and the Sierra Club, are now
demanding that Barshefsky expand the membership of the panel that advises her
on trade in chemicals and allied products.
Former Bay Guardian reporter and city editor Daniel Zoll is staff writer at
the International Forum on Globalization.
