-Caveat Lector-
It seems everyone in D.C. claims to believe in "free
trade," but the meaning of the phrase is being
drained out through sheer political hypocrisy.
A true free trader is not a supporter of export
subsidies and bailouts, foreign aid and mercantilist
trade treaties, centralized executive power or
global environmental regulations. Simply put, a free
trader is a person who wants tariffs, quotas, and
other barriers to trade repealed, beginning with
those erected by one's own government.
But as the pseudonymously written article below
explains, there are few if any free traders left in
D.C., despite all the rhetoric. As this "senior
diplomat" points out, the World Trade Organization
has become, not a facilitator of true trade
liberalization, but a setting for "a chain of legal
wars."
What a sad commentary on the political culture that
the person who reveals such truths publicly must do
so without signing his real name.
The Journal of Commerce
February 17, 1999
Negotiating trade in a world without free traders
By Frank George Benoit
So, we're in 1999 and a new round of multilateral
trade negotiations is supposed to be in the making.
But the more papers we read and the more private
talks we have with key decision-makers around the
world, the more doubtful that supposition seems.
At this stage, there just does not seem to be a
clear pattern of consistency between what trade
diplomats are ready to say at World Trade
Organization headquarters in Geneva and what is in
the daily signals coming from most of their capitals.
Nobody is fool enough to deny the existence of
WTO commitments to deepen the package of
disciplines and concessions related to agriculture,
services and some areas of intellectual property
rights. Almost everyone is ready to say that closing
markets would further complicate the uphill battle
against financial crisis, economic recession and
social unrest.
But the sense of global-phobia is there nonetheless.
The most active incidence of global-phobia is found
among most of the membership of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, but it
also touches several key Asian, Latin America and
African countries.
The signs of it are not directly reflected in public
statements. They are mainly present in forms of
self-explanatory body language that appear in most
of the informal talks taking place around the planet.
The message is clear. Nobody will fail to participate
in the WTO's mandatory rituals. But, at least for the
time being, not many players can be counted
among the real practitioners of the trade-liberalizing
faith if that means signing on to additional or
immediate trade surgery for sensitive sectors.
Blunt diplomacy allows players to declare a loud
and ambitious "yes" to the general script while
giving a flat "no" to actual progress by coming up
with unattainable or absurd proposals at the critical
moment. These days Geneva is covered with
ambitious informal proposals and ideas, most of
them deal-breakers that are not worth the paper on
which they are printed.
The obvious example of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do
recipe for paralysis is the United States.
From the beginning, President Clinton's
administration has proved unable to define a clear
trade policy. Meanwhile, it has passively watched
the departure to the private sector of most of its
experienced negotiators, thus paving the way for a
possible skills shortage. You don't train a
trustworthy, experienced trade negotiator in a few
classes or in a partisan headquarters.
Moreover, by now it is widely believed that the
administration cannot realistically expect to win
fast-track negotiating authority from Congress for
the rest of its tenure in office. Its team remains
convinced that an eternal bullying pace will continue
to serve well the U.S. trade interests.
The Clinton administration is proposing an
"ambitious sectoral approach" for which it lacks a
congressional mandate, and has no apparent goals
other than putting on a public relations show. But it
is uninterested in getting down to action.
In practice, the administration has an open mind for
some clearly identified interests -- electronic
commerce and information technology being among
the chosen few -- and a "let me think" attitude for
everything else.
It does not want an agenda in Geneva loaded with
any issues that are sensitive at home. That means
little room for the core traditional process, which
relies on giving a piece of cake for every WTO
appetite. Experience and common knowledge
demonstrate that a global approach of the kind
proposed by Sir Leon Brittan of the European
Commission is the only option for winning the
constructive involvement of all members of the
organization.
On top of that, Washington's implementation of
WTO commitments does not deserve high marks
from its partners. The extensive use of the
dispute-settlement system against the United
States has not been organized by demoniac forces
trying to upset Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and
commentator Pat Buchanan, or because trade
partners find it amusing and attractive to litigate
with the big boys. A panel is expensive and, for
normal people, a measure of last resort.
This may be attractive to lawyers everywhere as an
implicit full-employment policy, but it was not the
idea behind the multilateral trading system. People
signed on to the Havana Charter and, more
recently, the WTO to make deals and create a
world setting for an expanded, transparent,
predictable, open and fair trade -- not to develop a
chain of legal wars.
What is happening is not exactly what world trade
needs or expects from leading powers when faced
with an important negotiation. Washington has a
particular responsibility in sorting out this confusion.
If the Clinton administration continues to equate
trade policy with a passionate representation of
vested interests related to the consulting and
lobbying belt -- which is not in itself a sin -- it
solidifies a disappointing and counter-productive
message to the international community.
The general perception already is that Washington
has forgotten how to play its role and meet its
responsibilities as one of the main locomotives of
world trade, and that it has every potential to
become instead the main braked wagon in that
process.
How can the most influential WTO partners like the
Quadrilateral members, the United States, the
European Union, Japan and Canada say they want
a variety of gains when their negotiators have
nothing meaningful to offer as a trade-off to the
developing countries and any real free traders left
on earth?
How can they ask for so much -- zero tariffs for
electronic commerce; transparency on government
procurement; advanced information technology
liberalization; more sectoral specific commitments
on services; rules on competition, labor standards
and environment; civil participation in the WTO --
when they offer so little?
How can the European Union, standing at the gates
of the 21st century and suggesting a Millennium
Round of trade negotiations, believe that the world
will move to open cyberspace without turning
thumbs down on the permanence of dirty and high
protectionist measures and subsidies for agriculture
and textiles?
Can any constituency be sold the idea that
permanent adjustments are part of a fair and
unavoidable process in the industrial sector, but
totally out of the question when it comes to the
agribusiness sector?
Is this kind of sectoral balance in the multilateral
trading system a new avenue of real-politik?
Is the liberalizing process going to stop because
French far mers are ill tempered and there is no
political will to say to Premier Lionel Jospin and
like-minded friends that enough is enough? What
kind of multilateral trading system are we preparing
to shape when some political leaders make every
effort to export to Geneva their domestic conflicts?
Regardless of what people say or write in future
months, no real progress is to be expected if WTO
members attend the next WTO Ministerial
Conference with these reflexes.
Old-timers may argue that before any important
new negotiations the picture has been always the
same: confusion, crazy ideas and unnecessary
political foreplay. Perhaps.
But in the past, the equation of political will, political
power and political leadership leaned most of the
time toward trade liberalization.
Today, Pat Buchanan's positions are no longer just
a part of the protectionists' rhetorical arsenal.
President Clinton and others, willingly or not, have
taken up his dangerous flag.
* * * * *
Frank George Benoit is the pen name for a senior
diplomat writing in a personal capacity.
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