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> www.wsws.org
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> WSWS : News & Analysis : World Economy
>
> As WTO prepares for "Millennium Round"
>
> World trade conflicts intensify
>
> By Nick Beams
> 18 August 1999
>
> Back to screen version
>
> An article published in the Financial Times last Saturday on some
> recent activities of the US Central Intelligence Agency has cast
> a revealing light on the tensions between the major capitalist
> powers as they prepare for the ministerial meeting of the World
> Trade Organisation to be held in Seattle in November to set the
> agenda for global trade negotiations in the so-called Millennium
> Round.
>
> Entitled “CIA rehearses for sleepless night in Seattle”, it
> reported that earlier this month the National Intelligence
> Council, which reports to CIA director George Tenet on potential
> threats to US national security, had held a mock WTO conference
> in Washington in order to prepare for the November meeting.
>
> A CIA spokesman said the exercise had been undertaken to “prepare
> policymakers” for the meeting and that the agency “routinely”
> held such conferences “in order to help sharpen the level of
> debate about important issues.”
>
> According to the report: “Delegates to the mini conference
> included a wide range of intelligence officers, former senior
> trade officials, academics and others. Many are understood to
> have played the parts of representatives of other countries—in
> particular of traditional trade rivals such as the EU and
> Japan—to try and simulate what kinds of debate and disagreements
> might be heard in November.”
>
> It noted that while the CIA was widely rumoured to have stolen
> the position papers of the French delegation towards the
> conclusion of the so-called Uruguay Round of global trade
> negotiations in 1993, “the decision to give such prominence to
> the forthcoming ministerial meeting appears to mark a new
> departure for US intelligence.”
>
> Preparations for the WTO meeting have been underway for several
> months amid growing reports of deep divisions between the major
> economic blocs. Last Monday, for example, the Australian
> Financial Review reported that the tabling of policy positions by
> WTO members had “exposed a startling absence of consensus on the
> content of the negotiating round”. While there was agreement of
> the need to include agriculture and services, there was “little
> common ground”, particularly among the major countries on the
> rest of the agenda.
>
> The EU and Japan are believed to be in favour of the development
> of global rules on investment and competition policy. But the US
> is opposed to such a wide agenda fearing that it could take years
> to reach such broad agreement, thereby holding up the adoption of
> specific policies to open up markets in services, agriculture and
> industrial products.
>
> Even before the talks get underway, this year has already seen
> the eruption of a bitter conflict between the US and the EU over
> agricultural policies with the US imposing punitive duties under
> WTO rules in retaliation for the refusal of the EU to abide by
> rulings on the imports of banana and hormone-treated beef.
>
> But the beef and banana wars may well turn out to be just the
> preliminary skirmishes for a even bigger conflict over the issue
> of genetically modified foods, for which the EU decided to
> suspend authorisation in June until a new system of safety
> standards could be agreed upon.
>
> Issuing his first major policy statement since taking up the post
> of US ambassador to the EU in July, Richard Morningstar warned
> that Europe and America are heading for a $1 billion trade war if
> the EU persisted in its opposition.
>
> In a biannual Letter from Brussels, Morningstar, who previously
> held the position of Special Adviser to the President on Caspian
> Basin energy, said that “politics and demagoguery have completely
> taken over the regulatory process” in regard to EU policy on
> genetically modified foods.
>
> “Particularly in the UK, the media has learnt to love a good food
> safety scare, and the public debate all too often is dominated by
> scare stories and nightmare scenarios without any scientific
> basis. Until the EU can credibly separate science-based risk
> assessment and regulations from the political process the outlook
> for resolution of this issue is bleak.”
>
> There was a danger that the EU was over-reacting to the Belgian
> dioxin food scare and was moving to impose bans on animal feed
> substances which were permitted in the US. Hasty EU actions in
> this area risked becoming “another trade flashpoint”.
>
> With the market in genetically-modified foods likely to be worth
> billions of dollars in the coming years, the conflict over this
> issue would make the row over beef and bananas pale by
> comparison, he warned.
>
> But agriculture is not the only area of dispute. Even more
> significant could be the demand by the US that a global free
> market in services be established as a result of the WTO
> negotiations.
>
> The significance of this area for US corporate interests and the
> wide ranging scope of the American agenda was set out in a speech
> delivered by US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to the
> World Services Conference held in Washington on June 1.
>
> The US, she said, was “laying the foundation for a very ambitious
> and challenging agenda on trade in services over the next few
> years” covering a “vast range of industries, from finance and
> telecommunications to distribution, health, education,
> environmental protection, travel and tourism, construction, law,
> engineering, architecture and more.”
>
> The United States had created “the world's most efficient,
> competitive services sector” providing more than $6 trillion
> worth of production—70 percent of American GDP and more than one
> dollar in seven of world production.
>
> However, while 50 years of negotiations had provided
> substantially freer trade in industrial goods, the situation was
> very different in services where “rules and market access
> commitments are new.”
>
> “Even for WTO members trade is highly restricted. In most service
> sectors we see few specific commitments. Seventy WTO members have
> signed the Financial Services Agreement ... and a comparable
> number the Agreement on Basic Telecommunications; that means over
> sixty have signed neither. Only 14 WTO members have made
> commitments in audiovisual services. No developing countries have
> made commitments on gathering and dissemination of news; fewer
> that 50 WTO members have made commitments in distribution. And
> economies outside the WTO have done even less.
>
> “There are barriers to American exports and job creation. Our
> performance in a relatively closed world—$265 billion in services
> exports last year, supporting four million jobs—is simply an
> indicator of how much we can achieve in an open market.”
>
> Citing the importance of “regional initiatives” both for their
> direct and intrinsic benefits and as “models for what we might
> hope to achieve worldwide” in the forthcoming Millennium Round,
> Barshefsky pointed to the Transatlantic Economic Partnership with
> the EU, the aim of which was to “make it easier for US
> professionals and firms to operate in Europe, safeguard US
> interests as the EU expands and set an example of bilateral
> liberalization which the world can follow in the Round.”
>
> “Our work in Japan,” she continued, “has similar implications.
> Here, our agenda will assist the Japanese government's efforts in
> the financial services ‘Big Bang' and elsewhere to create a more
> flexible and efficient economy, open new opportunities for
> international business, and create areas of consensus as the
> Round approaches.”
>
> The US agenda in Japan includes liberalization of key sectors
> such as distribution, professional service, finance, energy and
> telecommunications.
>
> In their public pronouncements, the representatives of the major
> capitalist powers proclaim the benefits of the free market agenda
> in terms of the expansion of economic growth and jobs. But behind
> closed doors, the discussion assumes a more hostile tone ... at
> least where the majority of poorer countries are concerned.
>
> This week the Indian Financial Express reported on a WTO Trade
> and Development symposium held last March. Held with the aim of
> winning support from developing countries for the agenda of the
> new round of negotiations, it ended with threats and insults from
> the chairman.
>
> The director of the World Bank's Development Research Group, Paul
> Collier, wound up the conference with a speech in which he
> attacked African countries for having marginalised themselves in
> the WTO by not participating in it, pressing for special
> treatment which did not meet their needs, aspiring to regional
> trade arrangements that were a “dead end” carrying out “low
> credibility liberalisation” and creating a “hostile environment”
> by focusing their trade on a few commodities.
>
> According to the report, Collier denounced “African elites [who]
> did not want to undertake economic reforms because the status quo
> benefited them. ‘In political science we learn under what
> circumstances the elites would bite the bullet and make changes,'
> he said. ‘Political science tells us that changes come when the
> elites get scared.' He said the Africans ought now to be scared,
> because the future will be one of protectionism in the United
> States, unless the Americans could be offered something in a new
> round of trade negotiations.”
>
> Collier's concluding remarks followed similar threats by the main
> speaker, Fred Bergsten, the director of the Washington-based
> Institute for International Economics, who warned developing
> countries that they faced “huge risks” if they did not agree to a
> new WTO round. They had to provide “increased and eventually full
> access” to their markets as part of a bargain with the US and the
> EU not to erect new protectionist barriers.
>
> Now doubt when the conference opens in November, the air will be
> filled with the rhetoric of freedom, the rule of law, global
> economic expansion and international collaboration. But behind
> the scenes, with the activities of the CIA and the issuing of
> threats to smaller nations, it will be a very different story as
> the most powerful transnational corporations and their
> governments lay down the agenda for the next stage of their
> global expansion.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> Copyright 1998-99
> World Socialist Web Site
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