Seattle Times Olympia bureau
November 14, 1999
by David Postman

LOS ANGELES - U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley is frustrated as he completes the last leg of a 20-city tour to sell benefits of free trade to a skeptical public.

Daley wasn't bothered by protesters who followed his "Trade Globally, Prosper Locally" bus tour around L.A. with their "Pillage Globally, Lay-off Locally" van. He didn't raise his voice when a protester debated him through a small bullhorn two feet away.

But eight months after President Clinton asked him to build American support for global free trade before the World Trade Organization (WTO) meets in Seattle on Nov. 30, Daley says, "There isn't a true consensus yet."

"People are frightened of trade, for 100 different reasons," Daley told the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce yesterday.

It's been a tough sell since Daley first hit the road in April.

Consider UPS.

As protesters gathered on the sidewalk outside the chamber of commerce yesterday morning, a United Parcel Service van drove by. The driver honked, pumped his fist and shouted his agreement with the "Fair Trade Not Free Trade" signs.

Today, a top UPS executive was scheduled to join Daley on the final day of the free-trade campaign. Boeing Chairman and CEO Phil Condit also is expected. The company's machinists union is a major player in a massive anti-WTO protest being scheduled in Seattle.

Daley clearly has his work cut out for him if employees at companies that do as much international business as Boeing and UPS don't see a connection between free trade and their jobs.

"Companies are starting to figure out that they better make that connection to their employees or even their employees won't support this stuff," Daley said in an interview. "And if they don't, who the hell will?"

Daley doesn't want to validate claims of free-trade opponents who have pledged to stop the WTO from meeting in Seattle. But he concedes that many Americans don't see benefits of the globalization of commerce.

He says people don't know that international trade is a major factor in the country's economic good times. He says they worry that imported products and exported jobs are putting Americans out of work, in part because of the media's obsession with bad economic news. They see layoffs, he says, not payoffs.

"By no means am I saying that the American people are at the point where they want to shut off the borders and end trade," Daley said. "There is a very, very large majority of American people who support trade. But they have questions. They have concerns. They have fear."

This is more than a public-relations problem. Administration officials say America's reluctance to embrace global free trade is well-known around the world and will hurt U.S. negotiations.

Unease over free trade likely means there will be no congressional action this year on Caribbean and African agreements.

U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky recently told Congress that lack of public support is "the greatest threat to an open-trading regime."

That's what prompted Daley's National Trade Education Tour. Since April, he has traveled to cities with business executives and officials of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, two business lobbying groups and co-sponsors of the tour.

Demonstrations were organized on each leg of the tour by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a Ralph Nader group. Daley's free-trade bus has become their Corvair. They want to make it a new symbol of corporate greed.

Organized opposition to the WTO comes from groups that say that labor, environmental and human-rights laws are trumped by unfettered international trade.

Daley's bus was followed by a van and cars plastered with anti-free- trade posters. There were demonstrators at each stop, and they planned to be back today.

While Daley spoke to the chamber of commerce, about 50 protesters were outside. As the day heated up, the numbers melted. Only about a dozen were there two hours later to confront Daley on his way on to the bus.

"No to the WTO," Don White shouted into a bullhorn.

"Get off the bus," the group responded.

"Save local democracy," White said.

"Get off the bus," they responded.

Daley had been scheduled to meet today with longshoremen at the Port of Long Beach. But the International Longshoreman's and Warehousemen's Union issued a statement yesterday saying they would not participate because "we will not sit idly by and allow the WTO and their allies to participate or in any way assist in the destruction of U.S. labor, worker, environment and community protective legislation."

Daley visited ideaLab!, a Pasadena company that creates and operates Internet businesses, and did a second panel discussion at UCLA's business school, where protesters frequently shouted questions.

The bus tour is one part of the Clinton administration's efforts to build support for its trade agenda. Clinton announced recently that in Seattle he would push to make the environment and labor a bigger part of WTO discussions. It was a major overture to the two most prominent groups opposing the WTO and the Clinton trade agenda.

"I'm sympathetic with all these negative feelings," Clinton said last month. "But one of the things that spawns these kind of negative feelings is these folks feel like they've been shut out. They think the WTO is some rich guys' club where people get in and talk in funny language, and use words nobody understands, and make a bunch of rules that help the people that already have, and stick it to the people that have not.

"That's what they think. And so if we're going to change their perception, we've got to listen to their protests, and bring them into the tent, and go forward taking these concerns into account."

But some business leaders say administration officials are too quick to make concessions.

"They have allowed themselves to be swung around by the rhetoric of a very few in the labor movement," said L. Craig Johnstone, a senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Daley says business leaders have to convince people of the benefits of free trade.

"These discussions have to move out of the chamber offices and ... the board rooms and on to the shop floor, into the streets, in social settings," Daley told about 100 people at a lunch panel discussion at the chamber of commerce.

"We, the politicians, the government people, can't do this," he said. "It has to be out there with what I call the normal people."

David Postman's phone message number is 360-943-9882. His e-mail address is dpostman@seattletimes.com

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