Clinton offers critics a seat at WTO event
by James V. Grimaldi The Seattle Times Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - President Clinton is winning grudging praise for his effort to put labor and environmental issues on the World Trade Organization's Seattle agenda next month, but even some friends still worry that the gesture is too little, too late.
Calling the WTO a "private priesthood for experts," Clinton vowed yesterday to try to throw the doors open to labor and environmental groups clamoring for a seat with 134 nations meeting for the ninth round of global trade talks since 1947.
The promise to collaborate with labor and environmental groups came at a Democratic dinner last night during which Clinton acknowledged publicly the activists and representatives of so-called nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who have threatened massive protests.
"You know, every NGO, just about, with an environmental or a labor ax to grind is going to be outside the meeting room in Seattle, demonstrating against us, telling us what a terrible thing world trade is," Clinton said.
"Now, I think they're dead wrong about that."
As part of his broad and ambitious agenda that includes abolishing farm subsidies and extending a ban on electronic-commerce tariffs, Clinton also proposed creating a WTO working group to address labor issues. He further suggested that the WTO formally evaluate the environmental effects of trade proposals.
Clinton's call for more collaboration with labor and environmental organizations did not entirely satisfy critics. Supporters praised the move, though publicly fretted that the administration launched the effort late.
"We needed to do this four months ago," said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who attended the president's speech before the Democratic Leadership Council.
"Now they (the Clinton administration) are putting out some goals that are good, and it's going to take some time to put them in front of the groups and build support for them."
In the weeks leading to the talks, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky has toiled to produce a comprehensive proposal that meets the needs of U.S. business, particularly pushing to open markets for telecommunications and banking and facilitating ways of delivering services such as electronic commerce.
More recently, Barshefsky has turned her attention to the concerns of consumer, labor and environmental protesters.
But the Clinton administration has been seen largely as flat-footed in response - so much so that one of the nation's leading free-trade scholars has suggested that holding the WTO conference on U.S. soil was a mistake that provided fertile ground for activists.
"In retrospect," says economist Clyde Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former Reagan administration official, "it was a big mistake to have it in the U.S. The United States is the capital of NGOs, and it's easy in the U.S. for people to protest and express themselves."
Holding the talks in the United States wouldn't have had the potential of backfiring so badly if the administration had done the groundwork on free trade after announcing the new round at the State of the Union address in January, says Robert Litan, a economic scholar at the Brookings Institution.
"The administration has been low-keying it on trade, and it's about time to get in the game," Litan said. "This is a little like coming in in the eighth inning and being behind 5 to 1. The best thing you can hope for is for the thing not to be an utter disaster."
The protesters already have forced the administration to rethink its typical reaction to labor and environmental complaints - to relegate those concerns elsewhere. Until now, the tight circle of trade lawyers, diplomats and negotiators have been able to exclude the activists from the largely secretive WTO proceedings.
"The trade community wants to exclude talk about labor and environment because they believe it ought to be handled someplace else," Prestowitz said.
"But what's not adequately understood is these decisions do affect labor and the environment, and the other venues for considering these are not nearly as salient as the trade venue."
That critique is not far off from the one delivered by consumer advocate Ralph Nader yesterday with the release of a Public Citizen's report condemning the WTO for undermining U.S. health, safety, environmental and labor laws. While both Prestowitz and Nader dislike the secrecy, they widely disagree on the WTO's importance to the world and its impact on U.S. law.
In his speech, Clinton addressed that:
"All over the world, when issues come up, a lot of people representing these groups have some legitimate question or legitimate interest in being heard in the debate.
"And the WTO has been treated for too long like some private priesthood for experts, where we know what's right and we pat you on the head and tell you to just go right along and play by the rules that we reach.
"The world," the president said, "doesn't work that way anymore."
While businesses have expressed support for an aggressive agenda to further squelch subsidies and trade barriers overseas and have praised the president for addressing criticism head-on, some industry leaders harbor concerns that the parallel public debate still won't be fully engaged.
"The followup is critical," said Bob Hormats, a Goldman Sachs managing director who also attended Clinton's speech at the National Building Museum last night.
Without Clinton taking the "bully pulpit" and his administration making the case for free trade, Hormats said, the WTO could suffer a serious public-relations blow in Seattle.
"I'm not skeptical at this point," he said. "I'm hopeful. And I'm hopeful because the economics are with the administration."
But, he added, massive (Seattle) demonstrations threaten to "diminish and undermine the credibility of the WTO and weaken support here."
Clinton's speech did score some points. Labor officials said they were pleased about the U.S. push for a working group, which is an important first step toward goals of ending child labor, permitting workers to unionize and setting labor standards. But it also was seen as merely a token.
"If the president thinks he is going to call out that we have a working group and we're going to go away, I don't think so," said Ron Judd, executive secretary-treasurer of the King County Labor Council.
"It is going to take a lot more than that. We are going to mobilize for Seattle."
The Sierra Club's Ron Seligman, who coordinates the environmental group's trade issues, said the protesters will have the upper hand because they are focused on getting a mainstream message to the public, while Barshefsky and the administration, until now, have been preoccupied with selling their trade agenda to the world.
"Clearly, the administration made a blunder in bringing this summit to Seattle," Seligman said. "Seattle is home court for the environmental movement. We'll be out in force."
Copyright © 1999 The Seattle Times Company
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