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.

San Francisco Bay Guardian
September 15, 1999
By Daniel Zoll

When 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.