WTO

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

==============================

Hey, from Business Week magazine, of all places!

==============================

The Seattle Protesters Got It Right  

(Business Week)---Global trade politics will never be the same after 
Seattle. For the first time, the issue is squarely joined: Shall human 
rights take their place alongside property rights in the global 
economic system? For advocates of laissez-faire trade, of course, 
the matter is far simpler. Those who question ''free trade,'' as The 
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote indignantly, 
are ''a Noah's Ark of flat-earth advocates.'' The man can mix a 
metaphor as well as miss the point.  

The point, reduced to its essence, is that capitalism works better as 
a mixed system than as a laissez-faire system. For a century, 
citizens of Western countries have voted for a mixed system. We 
prefer a mixed economy to temper the extremes and inequities of 
raw capitalism. That's why we regulate banks and securities 
markets; that's why we have labor and environmental laws and 
social insurance.  

But now, through such institutions as the World Trade Organization 
and the International Monetary Fund, the world's investors want to 
resurrect the capitalism of the robber baron era--a global charter for 
property rights but not human rights. Otherwise, how could China, a 
one-party state that jails people seeking free speech or free trade 
unions, possibly qualify for membership? Otherwise, why is it 
permissible to trample the sovereignty of developing countries to 
secure U.S. intellectual-property rights and free capital flows, but not 
to ban child labor?  

Commentators such as Friedman confuse two things: the virtue of 
trade and the ground rules for trade. Foreign trade, like domestic 
commerce, enhances economic growth. But increased commerce 
does not require pure laissez-faire. As Jeff Faux of the Economic 
Policy Institute has observed, policies that are utterly mainstream in 
the national context, such as minimum wages, are deemed 
controversial when applied globally.  

However desirable cross-border trade may be, it is not the sum and 
substance of a democratic society. Friedman also wrote: ''Every 
country and company that has improved its labor, legal, and 
environmental standards has done so because of more global trade, 
more integration, more Internet.'' This would certainly be news to 
Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King Jr., or Rachel Carson, not to 
mention Nelson Mandela or Thomas Jefferson. The struggle for a 
decent, democratic, and humane society has little to do with trade. It 
exists in an entirely separate realm--the realm of democratic 
citizenship--that is now being undermined by trade.  

Happily, it is democratic citizenship that's challenging the claims of 
global laissez-faire, just as it was democratic citizenship that built a 
domestic mixed economy. In Seattle, President Clinton called for 
more trade, but also for labor and environmental standards, and 
more openness in WTO panels. Clinton didn't get a sudden 
revelation. Rather, he observed that the labor movement, which 
reluctantly endorsed Al Gore, is livid about Clinton's decision to 
welcome totalitarian/capitalist China into the WTO. He saw his allies 
in the environmental movement in the streets. In short, he changed 
his tune because of citizen protest.  

The Administration went to Seattle hoping for a grand bargain: The 
U.S. would offer a token committee to gingerly explore labor 
standards; the Europeans would stop managing their farm economy; 
the Third World would become even more open to global capital 
flows. The deal didn't fly.  

A much better deal can be had: Give poor countries some serious 
debt relief, as proposed by the world's religious leaders in the 
Jubilee 2000 campaign. In exchange, governments of authoritarian 
countries would have to embrace minimal standards of decency for 
their workers and citizens. Also, raise environmental standards, but 
accompany this with serious transfers of technology. Before Seattle, 
these ideas were not even debatable. Now they are getting a 
hearing.  

Even the editorial writers of The New York Times, who routinely 
champion the conventional view of free trade, found the words to 
declare that ''[the] WTO's 135 members will make a huge mistake if 
they fail to grasp the core belief fueling these unruly protests--that 
the WTO is far too insular, that it has displayed far too little 
sympathy for issues such as workers' rights and the environment, 
and that its secretive procedures undermine public trust.''  

But it isn't the WTO that's insular. The WTO agenda is set by the 
world's leading governments, which forgot that they are elected not 
only to advance the interests of multinational corporations but also 
those of citizens. The author William Greider observes: What a 
shame that careful, reasoned argument could not accomplish what 
was achieved by a little broken glass.

Copyright Businessweek Online 12/99





* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  From the Listowner  * * * * * * * * * * * *
.	To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org		In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ====
* * * * * * *     http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/     * * * * * * *