Contra Costa Times
October 19, 1999
By James Bruggers, Times Staff Writer

Free trade.

It's the place where ultra-conservative presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan meets liberal consumer activist Ralph Nader, labor unions and some of the nation's most aggressive environmentalists.

This potent political mix -- where right circles around to meet left -- could very well produce the nation's largest ever demonstrations against economic globalization.

Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, are expected to descend upon Seattle next month when representatives of more than 130 nations start a new round of talks by the World Trade Organization. The five-year-old WTO promotes trade between nations and resolves disputes according to mutually agreed upon set of rules.

"Some people are calling it the environmental protest of the century," said Han Shan, program director for the Berkeley-based Ruckus Society, which is training activists in nonviolent civil disobedience. "We'll see. But it's definitely the biggest thing on the nation's environmental calendar this year."

As many as 5,000 demonstrators could come from Northern California, where environmental groups have been organizing at a frantic pace. One is Arthur Freyer, a Berkeley electrician and union member who owns a small business that does theater and movie production work.

"I was brought up in high school to believe in our laws," said Freyer, who is also active with the San Francisco-based Sierra Club. "Suddenly these world trade laws are saying we may not be able to have clean air and clean water."

The confrontation will pit VIPs from around the world meeting inside convention halls against activists marching outside and holding their own Citizens Summit in local churches.

"You'll basically have the elite inside carving up the world, and you have the people on the outside saying they want to have some say in it," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez.

To be sure, efforts to break down trade barriers between the United States and other countries continues to have strong political support around the country and in the Clinton administration.

The WTO has its roots in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which arose in 1947 out of the ashes of a bombed out Europe following World War II.

"There is remarkably little conflict between nations that trade with each other," said Daniel Sumner, UC-Davis professor of agriculture and resource economics. "Either you get along better, or you have too much on the line to blow each other away," said the author of "Agriculture Trade Policy: Letting Markets Work."

Individuals benefit, too, Sumner said.

"The benefits of trade are spread very, very widely and hard to identify. The fact that you got a raise last year, was it because of the trade agreements? Maybe."

While nations still impose many trade barriers, free trade agreements have increased consumer choices and helped keep costs down, said David Vogel, UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business professor and author of "Trading Up: Consumers and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy."

Trade agreements are ways to increase living standards around the world, he said.

He emphatically disagrees with environmentalists who say trade agreements are sending the planet on a road to ecological ruin. On the contrary, as each country's economy improves, it shows more concern for the environment and spends more to protect it, he said.

And even some of the harshest critics of the existing trade agreements insist they're not against opening up more trade between nations.

"If you're from California, you can't be against trade," said Miller, who opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. "It's about when you do it, you do it the right way, and with concerns for the people and the environment."

Certainly more than just environmental issues will be raised in Seattle.

Steel workers and Teamsters, for instance, are concerned about the loss of jobs in the United States. Human rights groups fight for better living and working conditions abroad. And the Pat Buchanan-types are isolationists, railing against a one-world government.

But the environment is taking center stage, in part due to high-profile cases of where domestic laws have been challenged and sometimes changed under free trade agreements. Among them:

Petroleum. The WTO agreed with Venezuela that United States Clean Air Act regulations couldn't keep its gasoline containing certain contaminants out of California and eight other states.

Dolphin-safe tuna. Prompted by Mexico's complaint to WTO's predecessor under the GATT, Congress this year lifted a ban against tuna caught using methods that had entrapped and killed thousands of dolphins annually.

Endangered shrimp. The WTO sided against a United States ban on imports of shrimp from countries that use nets that also trap endangered sea turtles.

Beef. The WTO ruled against a European ban on importing beef treated with certain hormones.

In addition, earlier this year Canada-based Methanex filed a $970 million complaint under NAFTA against California's plan to ban MTBE, a gasoline additive blamed for causing groundwater pollution. Methanex is the world's largest supplier of methanol, a natural gas derivative used to make MTBE.

Often the dispute comes down to whether a law is legitimate and based on science, or whether intentionally or not it merely gives a trade advantage to one country over another.

"The WTO doesn't like countries to use trade policies that interfere with other country's sovereign powers," said Vogel, the Berkeley professor.

Under the rules, Americans can impose any laws they want on Americans but not, say, on Mexicans in Mexico, Vogel said.

The tuna-dolphin controversy serves as a good example, said WTO critic Mark Spaulding, a lawyer and research fellow at the UC-San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies.

"The bottom line is that United States was trying to extend a domestic law into international waters to govern foreign fishing fleets, who were, as bycatch??, killing species of dolphins that were not in any danger at the time of becoming rare or extinct."

At the same time, Spaulding and others, including supporters such as Vogel and Sumner, believe WTO has a big problem stemming from its secretive, undemocratic nature.

"The accusation that they are nameless, faceless bureaucrats is essentially true," Spaulding said.

When the WTO hears a claim, proceedings are private. Participants often remain anonymous. There's no formal opportunity for input from the public or institutions such as environmental or labor groups.

Rulings can be appealed, but the government that loses must either change its laws or pay penalties to keep them in place.

All of this has led to the heated rhetoric, calls for reforms, and opportunities for employing creative symbolism that touches core democratic principles. The Sierra Club, for example, has launched a "No Globalization Without Representation" campaign that plays on American patriots' independence cry more than two centuries ago of "No Taxation without Representation."

The WTO "is about global governance," said Daniel Seligman, who leads the Sierra Club's "Responsible Trade" program, and despite his protests to the contrary, sounds a lot like a Buchanan supporter.

"It's a set of rules that shifts decision making about public health issues, about food safety issues, about environmental issues and so on ... from accountable domestic authorities to unaccountable, international authorities."

After trying for several years to capture the public's attention, trade agreement critics may be finally breaking through.

Congress recently failed to give Clinton "fast track" authority to negotiate new trade agreements.

And in a new report, while the WTO defends itself, for the first time it acknowledges its policies can have a negative affect on the environment.

The report concludes that there is "no basis for the sweeping generalizations that are often heard in the public debate, arguing that trade is either good for the environment, or bad for the environment. The real world linkages are a little bit of both, or a shade of gray."

Also this month, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky pledged to work toward "a global economy that more fully reflects the concerns of ordinary people through a program of reform and improvements of the WTO."

Among them, she said, are WTO environmental policies. "We have to be sure that further market opening compliments and supports our international environmental goals."

None of these assurances, however, are enough to stop those planning to rally in Seattle. Some activists want to shut down WTO forever, while others are merely looking for reforms.

Among the demands:

Don't make it easier to export and import logs that come directly from the forest. This could spread forest pests.

Take a precautionary approach to deciding whether a nation's environmental or health law is legitimate.

Don't prevent meaningful consumer labels on such products as sustainable lumber, organic food or food from genetically engineered crops.

With an emphasis on solving environmental problems through multinational accords, don't make it too hard for a state or nation to pass progressive laws when justified.

"A state like California has been at the forefront by setting leadership standards," said Seligman. "The WTO won't us do that unless we get the whole world to agree."

So starting the week of Nov. 29, activists will likely scale skyscrapers and unfurl banners and hold their own meetings and press conferences. There's talk of blocking streets, occupying buildings and inflating a giant GATTzilla monster.

"What really underlies our activities is a sense of empowerment," said Juliette Beck, an organizer with Global Exchange, a San Francisco corporate watchdog group.

"The WTO may seem like the most powerful organization in the world. But we know that individuals can act consciously as consumers, and as part of a democracy, to create communities that we envision."