-Caveat Lector-
SHOWDOWN IN SEATTLE
"A shadowy international group increasingly tells governments
what they can and can't do. Activists are taking on the World
Trade Organization at its first ever U.S. meeting this fall."
by Daniel Zoll
San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 15, 1999
When [California] state assembly members Patricia Wiggins
(D-Santa Rosa) and Tom Torlakson (D-Martinez) introduced
legislation requiring government contractors to use U.S.-made
materials, they hoped to give a boost to domestic industry. The
legislature passed the "Buy American" bill last week.
Now it just has to pass muster with an unelected panel of
trade representatives based in Switzerland.
In approving the bill, California lawmakers withstood heavy
lobbying from the California Council for International Trade,
which represents Chevron, Boeing, the Gap, and some of the other
biggest corporations doing business in the state. Those
corporations say giving preference to local companies is illegal
under rules passed by the Geneva-based World Trade Organization.
They should know: they helped devise the WTO in the first place.
Thanks to the WTO, the Buy American bill, now sitting on
Gov. Gray Davis's desk, faces an uncertain future. It could be
the latest victim of global "free trade" measures that are tying
the hands of national, state, and local governments. Since its
founding in 1995, the WTO has weakened the U.S. Clean Air Act,
ruled against European food safety laws, and watered down a U.S.
environmental law protecting endangered sea turtles -- all in the
name of free trade and corporate profits.
Although the WTO's sweeping authority is still unknown to
most Americans, the backlash against free trade rules is gaining
momentum. When the WTO holds its first ministerial on U.S. turf,
in Seattle in November, it will be greeted by protesters from
around the world: AIDS activists, organic farmers, food safety
defenders, environmentalists, union members, and hundreds of
others. The activities are set to include rallies, a teach-in,
press conferences, an anti-WTO daily newspaper, street theater,
and general civil disobedience; organizers are billing it as the
"protest of the century."
"It's like a carnival against capitalism," Kevin Danaher of
San Francisco-based nonprofit Global Exchange says of the
anti-WTO events planned for Seattle. "The whole rainbow is going
to be there: the labor groups, the environmental groups, the
sweatshop groups. This is the Woodstock for the global economy."
Consistently corporate
The WTO consists of 134 member countries, along with 33
nations with "observer" status. Under the WTO's dispute
settlement process, countries can challenge each other's laws and
regulations as trade barriers. Decisions are made in secret by a
panel of unelected, unaccountable trade bureaucrats who are not
subject to conflict-of-interest laws.
Since its founding in 1995, the WTO has been remarkably
consistent: virtually every single time a public health or
environmental law has been challenged, the WTO has ruled it
illegal. In its very first decision, the WTO ruled in favor of
foreign oil refiners and against the U.S. Clean Air Act, which
required refiners to produce cleaner gas.
The WTO can also be counted on to lower public health
standards at every opportunity. Under WTO rules, countries are
not required to have minimum food safety standards -- but they
can be penalized for setting standards that are higher than
guidelines allowed under global trade rules. Last year the WTO
ruled on behalf of the Clinton administration that Europe's
import ban against beef from cattle treated with certain growth
hormones was illegal. As a result, the E.U. must change its law
or face harsh trade sanctions.
Sometimes, the mere threat of a challenge in the WTO is
enough to induce a country to change a law or policy designed to
protect health or the environment. That's what happened when
Guatemala, in accordance with UNICEF guidelines, tried to ban
baby formula packaging that associated formula with healthy, fat
babies. After the U.S. State Department, at the behest of Gerber
Products, threatened to challenge the regulation at the WTO,
Guatemala dumped the law.
If multinational corporations and other WTO boosters get
their way, those rulings are just the beginning. Free traders
hope the Seattle meeting will launch a "Millennium Round" of
trade talks that would dramatically expand the WTO's authority
into areas such as investment, competition policy, and government
procurement. Also planned is a global agreement on deregulating
the trade in forest products, which activists are calling the
"free logging" agreement. There is even talk of negotiating a
so-called Multilateral Agreement on Investments, which would
restrict governments' ability to regulate foreign investment and
currency speculation.
Global government
Activists are seizing the WTO ministerial as a historic
opportunity to educate the public about the dark side of the
global economy. On Nov. 26 and 27, the weekend before the
ministerial kicks off, the San Francisco-based International
Forum on Globalization will hold a teach-in on economic
globalization and the role of the WTO. Speakers will include
Indian physicist and activist Vandana Shiva; Maude Barlow, often
described as the "Ralph Nader of Canada"; the Sierra Club's Carl
Pope; and economist David Korten, author of "When Corporations
Rule the World."
IFG chair Jerry Mander says the WTO represents a new form of
"global government" that has usurped the authority of
nation-states. The WTO is unique among global institutions, he
says, because it has the power to make and enforce international
laws that member governments are bound to live by. But unlike
nation-states, which can respond to the needs of citizens, the
WTO responds primarily to the will of corporations.
"The WTO is a servant to the transnational corporations that
are driving the global economy," Mander said.
As the Wall Street Journal reported in April, WTO meeting
planners picked Seattle partly because of the city's experience
in dealing with environmental protesters. They may need it. On
Nov. 29, the first day of the ministerial and the day that
President Bill Clinton is scheduled to address the delegation,
WTO opponents, including the Bay Area's Global Exchange, Art and
Revolution Convergence, the Ruckus Society, and Rainforest Action
Network, are planning to shut down the meeting using nonviolent
civil disobedience.
Organized labor is also planning to turn out in force. Chuck
Mack, the Teamsters union's western region vice president, said
the AFL-CIO is considering renting out the Seattle Kingdome for a
massive rally. Mack says the Teamsters and other unions will be
in Seattle to take a stand against the free trade agenda. "That's
an issue that we're not going to compromise on," Mack said.
"We're not just going to turn the future of the people we
represent over to a bunch of trade representatives."
Unions, environmental groups, and other nongovernmental
organizations say they have been shut out of the WTO's
decision-making process -- while the corporate lobbyists who
essentially wrote the trade laws have had insider status from the
beginning. The fact is, anyone can have access to high-ranking
trade officials at the November meeting -- anyone, that is, who
can afford to pay for it. WTO meeting organizers are asking
corporations for big bucks in exchange for the right to socialize
with trade officials. A donation of $250,000 or more buys a
ticket to the opening and closing receptions, the "ministerial
dinner," and a business conference. More than 35 corporations
have obliged so far, including Microsoft; Bill Gates hopes to
influence the negotiations over intellectual property rights.
Organizers say the success of the Seattle mobilization will
depend in large part on the turnout from the Bay Area. San
Francisco AIDS activist Donna Rae Palmer is among those already
planning to attend. Palmer's organization, Mobilization Against
AIDS, is fighting to make AIDS drugs more widely available in
poor countries. The Clinton administration -- on behalf of big
U.S. drug companies-- is using the threat of WTO sanctions to
pressure countries like South Africa to stop developing cheaper
versions of patented AIDS drugs.
"We're concerned that commercial interests are overtaking
concerns for health, human rights, and national sovereignty,"
Palmer told the Bay Guardian, "and we're calling for no expansion
of the WTO until there is a full review of these human impacts."
[Former Bay Guardian reporter Daniel Zoll is staff writer at
International Forum on Globalization.
Call the International Forum on Globalization at (415)
771-3394 or the Bay Area Fair Trade Campaign at (415) 255-7296,
ext. 254.
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