Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter
October 2, 1999
By Bruce Ramsey

Michael Moore, the New Zealand politician who now heads the World Trade Organization, had a taste of Seattle yesterday--from dignitaries to protesters.

"You come to our town, we're going to shut you down," chanted about 25 protesters at the University of Washington's HUB Ballroom.

"Who elected you?" shouted a protester as Moore showed up for a breakfast meeting.

Moore was selected after long politicking among the WTO's 134 member governments which make decisions by consensus rather than majority vote. "I would have liked to have been called 'the New Zealand candidate,'" he said. In the eyes of the Asian and European press, "I was always, 'the American candidate.'"

Moore visited Seattle yesterday in preparation for the WTO conference, which will be held in the city from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3.

While in town yesterday, Moore disputed the opponents' image of the WTO as a shadow government in Geneva overruling national laws.

"We are an organization of sovereign governments," he said.

He repeated many times that he has no independent power. At breakfast he said, "People say, 'You've got too much power.' I'm still looking for this power. I can't find it."

In negotiations to create WTO rules, he said, "Any country has veto power. The United States puts its hand up, and things stop. Japan puts its hand up, and things stop. The little guys put their hands up, and things stop."

The Washington Council on International Trade, which arranged Moore's schedule, gave critics several chances to question him. The largest was a two-hour session at the UW.

Richard Feldman, executive director of The Workers' Center, AFL-CIO, asked why the WTO objects if a country subsidized its exports, but not if it suppresses labor unions. Suppressing unions, he said, "is as much a subsidy as giving cash."

Moore said labor was the responsibility of the International Labor Organization in Geneva. The ILO, a legacy of Woodrow Wilson, does not have WTO-like power to authorize members to penalize rule-breakers.

Larry Dohrs, a labor-rights activist for Myanmar, said that at least the ILO had kicked out the nation, also known as Burma, for forced labor. The WTO has not. How could the WTO justify treating such a renegade "as a normal country?" he asked.

"You'd have to get a consensus to throw anybody out -- and you wouldn't get it," Moore said.

Someone asked: What would the WTO have done if Hitler's Germany or Pol Pot's Cambodia had been members?

"We would have had trouble," Moore said. But he said it was better to face that than to live in a world in which trade was left without any rules.