[Ellen Gould is one of Canada's premier anti-WTO activists...]
47 demonstrators arrested at EU-US trade
talks in Cincinnati, Nov 18, 2000
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 18:02:20 -0800 From: Ellen Gould <ellengould at telus.net> To: Sid Shniad <shniad at sfu.ca>, Bob Olsen <bobolsen at interlog.com> Subject: Trade protestors hit home
I was down in Cincinnati for the counter-conference to the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue, a forum explicitly created for transnational CEOs to give direct input to government negotiators on what they want in trade deals. These meetings have virtually written the text for agreements in the past, with governments reporting on how well they have followed through on the CEOs recommendations.
There have been four of these meetings, but Cincinnati was the first where they encountered demonstrators. They probably went to Cincinnati because it is known as a conservative town. They didn't count on a whole series of teach-ins and other activities that built up to quite successful demonstrations and pickets. The police response was truly awful. At a demonstration this Saturday that I attended, police put barricades around the entire public square where the demo was being held and made people agree to being searched before they were able to cross police lines to join the demonstration. The harassment of young people was particularly bad, as they were arrested immediately for doing things as innocuous as jaywalking. At least some of the media got what was happening. As you can see below, the reporter (from the Financial Times!) refers to 47 arrests in largely peaceful demonstrations.
The main recommendation CEOs were putting to government officials at the conference was that removing trade barriers now has little to do with tarriffs but all about deregulation. The clarion call for transnationals currently is "approved once, accepted everywhere", which means that no community will be able to set standards higher than ones that are set internationally under the guidance of transnationals.
The citizens' actions groups from Ohio did amazing work pulling off the protests to this meeting, making the critical point that governments and transnationals can now expect to face protests wherever they hold these profoundly anti-democratic meetings.
Cheers - Ellen Gould <ellengould at telus.net>
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Trade protestors hit home
By Edward Alden in Cincinnati Financial Times, November 19 2000
European and US government and business leaders sought at the weekend to revitalise their troubled bilateral trading relationship, but acknowledged that growing public concern over trade liberalisation is stifling further progress.
The high-level meeting of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue took place as protesters battled police outside a downtown Cincinnati hotel.
The demonstrations were the first in the six-year history of the TABD, but have become a familiar backdrop to international trade meetings since the violent protests at last year's failed World Trade Organisation ministerial in Seattle. More than 100 police in full riot gear, about a dozen of them on horseback, ringed the hotel for the two-day meeting, and 47 protestors were arrested in largely peaceful demonstrations.
The protests have clearly rattled the confidence of both political and business leaders, who spent much of the two days debating how better to sell to the public the benefits of freer trade.
"Everybody is more risk-averse than a few years ago," said Bertrand Collomb, chief executive of Lafarge and European co-chair of the TABD. "They are being watched by public opinion much more."
George David, chief executive of United Technologies and the US co-chair, said "we would be foolish to fail to listen to these demonstrators and their views".
In the final communique, the TABD said it must work with non-governmental organisations and citizens' groups "out of the conviction that globalisation is not incompatible with their concerns". "We have a selling job," said Pascal Lamy, the EU's trade commissioner. "We need to find new ways of getting across the benefits of globalisation."
The fears over public reaction have already threatened one of the TABD's highest priorities. At the urging of the chief executives, the US and the EU plan a renewed push this week to implement a mutual recognition agreement that would make it easier for companies to meet product safety specifications in both the US and Europe. Businesses say such streamlining could shave more than $1bn in costs on transatlantic trade.
US regulatory agencies have been reluctant to allow European facilities to certify products as safe for the US market, bringing the talks to a stalemate.
One European official said that the US stance has been heavily influenced by the opponents of further trade liberalisation. "They are terrified of the NGOs, they are terrified of Public Citizen," he said, referring to the consumer group led by Ralph Nader.
The US in turn says progress on regulatory co-operation has been hampered by the European unwillingness to allow greater transparency and openness in its regulatory procedures to public scrutiny.
The chief executives also urged much greater caution in using the WTO's dispute settlement system, which has failed to resolve several contentious US-EU trade disputes and has stoked public fears of an international agency overriding national sovereignty.
While business groups were originally strong proponents of binding dispute settlement, the TABD urged the two governments to exhaust all negotiating possibilities before resorting to the WTO.
By Edward Alden in Cincinnati Financial Times, November 19 2000