When Seattle won the right to host this month’s gathering of the World Trade Organization, civic leaders basked in the glow of the international recognition given a city that considers itself the trading center of the new global economy.
The region of 3 million people already boasts two of the world’s most globally competitive businesses, Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co. Its port teems with cargo-laden ships. At its airport, the below-ground tram offers announcements in Mandarin Chinese and Korean.
And by landing the WTO meeting, where 3,000 delegates from 135 nations will launch a new round of talks aimed at liberalizing trade, city officials could look forward to years of references in the media to the “Seattle Round” of trade talks as the negotiations over liberalizing trade progressed. It’s the kind of publicity every city covets.
But as the Nov. 30 opening session draws closer, Seattle officials are grappling with another possible legacy from this year’s WTO meeting: that the tens of thousands of protesters expected to air their grievances during the four-day affair will give a permanent black eye to the global trading system. Officials are working overtime to ensure that Seattle doesn’t become to trade conventions what Chicago became to political conventions in 1968.
“We had no idea this would become the lightning rod for worldwide protest,” said Seattle Mayor Paul Schell. “We’re working with all groups that plan to protest. We know there are issues.”
The WTO, an outgrowth of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was created in 1995 to act as an oversight board on international trade. It was given new powers to overrule laws and regulations among its member nations if they violated the previously agreed-upon rules of international trade.
But the decisions it has made in its first five years have drawn a firestorm of protests from civic groups around the world. From opponents of genetically modified foods on the Indian subcontinent to American truckers who fear unsafe trucks coming in from Mexico, the protesters believe the actions of this relatively obscure international body are undercutting their ability to set labor, environmental and regulatory standards in their own countries.
Organized labor in this strong union town plans to greet the WTO’s opening session with a rally and march that could attract up to 50,000 people. The U.S. and European labor movements want to put labor standards like abolishing child labor and allowing free trade unionism on the WTO agenda. The move is opposed by less-developed countries who claim it is just a device to protect workers in the industrialized world from their cheaper labor.
The AFL-CIO recently won a major victory and endorsed the U.S. objectives for the Seattle summit after the Clinton administration agreed to push for including a discussion of labor rights in the next round of trade talks. But the protests will go forward, since Third World members of the consensus-driven WTO will undoubtedly veto their inclusion.
Environmentalists from around the globe also plan to congregate during the meeting. They object to recent WTO decisions that they claim eviscerated regulations designed to protect endangered species and local environments. Their most grievous example: a WTO ruling saying the United States could not prohibit imports of shrimp from countries that use nets banned in U.S. waters because they may also grab endangered turtles.
Some of the more radical environmental groups are planning major acts of civil disobedience. Last month Berkeley, Calif.-based Ruckus Society held a “Globalize This! Action Camp” where 160 activists told reporters they planned to hang banners from freeways, chain themselves to buildings and engage in other forms of non-violent protest against WTO rules and policies.
Organizers on both sides are trying to downplay the possibility of violent confrontation. Protest organizers have issued stern warnings to all groups sending activists to Seattle that violent actions will not be tolerated.
“This is all overblown,” said Michael Dolan, the lead organizer for the Citizens Trade Campaign, which is coordinating protests at the meeting. “There won’t be violence. There will be some civil disobedience.”
Still, Seattle officials have left nothing to chance. The city has earmarked $6 million for security and recently gave its police department sensitivity training.
“We’re retraining everybody on how to manage crowds and how not to overreact,” said Mayor Schell. “Thirty years ago, I was on the other side of the barricades. A lot of people here in City Hall were. So I know what it’s like.”
Preparations for what the WTO officially calls the Seattle Ministerial Conference are being managed by the Seattle Host Organization, an ad-hoc group co-chaired by Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates and Boeing CEO Phil Condit. The director of day-to-day affairs is Ray Waldmann, Boeing’s top lobbyist.
While the governor and mayor also sit on the committee, the leading role given U.S. corporations with a big stake in the rules of foreign trade has drawn numerous complaints, particularly in Europe. Some firms and the media there have charged that preferential access to the top government ministers who negotiate trade deals has been put up for sale.
“The Europeans are very upset about the private-public partnership,” said a spokesman for the WTO. “They don’t understand the Coca-Cola Olympics. It hasn’t helped us that this is seen as open to business influence.”
The complaint originated in the host organization’s decision to raise the entire $9.2 million needed for conference preparations from the private sector. The group’s fundraising includes a private dinner for 700 on opening night for delegates of cabinet-level rank. About 150 seats have been reserved for corporations that donate $75,000 or more to the host group.
“It’s ridiculous to think a trade agreement happens because someone sits next to an official at dinner or mingles with them at a cocktail reception,” Waldmann said.
The five sessions of the WTO meeting–the impact of trade on labor, the environment, agriculture, e-commerce and services–are being orchestrated so they do not become harangues dominated by opponents of the WTO. Some of the non-government organizations seeking recognition from the WTO include the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Europe’s aviation consortium Airbus Industrie, as well as groups like the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Federation and the AFL-CIO.
“These parallel programs were set up long before the protests were planned,” Waldmann said. “We knew we needed to deal with the hot-button issues in some fashion while the WTO sessions were under way.”
They obviously have not defused the planned demonstrations. Seattle’s King County AFL-CIO, which is orchestrating the opening day protest, has reserved a local stadium that seats 25,000 for staging a rally before marching to the Seattle Convention Center.
The U.S. labor movement and the Geneva-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions want the WTO to include five labor standards in any future agreement. The U.S. government has agreed to back the issue at the meeting. While the five standards have already been approved by the United Nations-backed International Labor Organization, that organization–unlike an international trade accord–has no enforcement powers.
The five standards are prohibitions on child labor, forced labor and job-site discrimination, and an affirmative right for workers to join unions and to engage in collective bargaining.
“People keep telling me (including these standards in trade agreements) is complicated,” said Ron Judd, executive director of the King County AFL-CIO. “But if you can penalize a country for violating patent law on the content of a CD, why can’t you penalize a country that forces children to produce that CD? That doesn’t seem so complicated to me.”
The environmentalists will highlight how WTO decisions have either eliminated or weakened environmental standards. A recent study by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch found that all six WTO rulings on cases brought by countries protesting other countries’ environmental laws declared those laws illegal barriers to trade. One notable case involved a U.S. rule that banned shrimp from countries that used nets that are illegal here because they can also trap turtles protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
As a first step toward creating new rules for the global trading system, the WTO would need to approve new committees on labor and environmental standards, just as the organization now has committees on intellectual property, tariffs and the like. But there are no signs the organization is ready to act.
In his first U.S. speech as WTO director general, New Zealander Michael Moore expressed concern for the social problems associated with trade, but suggested there was little his organization could do about it.
“This and other social policies are beyond anything that the multilateral trading system can deliver,” he said in September.
