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Clinton sabotaged any chances for success at the WTO summit

Wednesday, December 15, 1999

By BRUCE RAMSEY Mail author
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Who sank the WTO? More fingers are beginning to point at Bill Clinton. In yesterday's Washington Post, former Bush trade official Robert Zoellick says the president "straddled and stumbled" by choosing to host the World Trade Organization "without laying the political groundwork globally and without developing a negotiating strategy."

There was a strategy. It involved enlisting the weaker members against Europe. But it all fell apart when Clinton told the Post-Intelligencer he expected that labor standards would someday be enforceable in trade agreements. His own negotiator had been saying the opposite.

Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky had also been promising that all the weak countries would be at the table of power for the first time, unless there was a problem reaching a deal. But such a problem ensued, and the newly empowered ministers were booted out.

The other problem was the president's reaction to the protesters.

"They are knocking on the door here, saying, let us in and listen to us," Clinton said in his speech at the Four Seasons Olympic. Many in the audience had spent the previous day up close and personal with protesters. Now the president of the United States, who had not been there, was lecturing them about not listening.

The public, Clinton said, must "in a very real sense, join in the negotiations."

Really? How? That would be like letting an entire shop in on a labor negotiation.

Then Clinton said the WTO conferees should "be prepared to give an answer" to the protesters. Here was a good idea. And what was Clinton's answer? Well, sifting through his mushy speech, one finds two answers. First, he said, whatever the WTO's problems are, the world would have been worse off without it. Second, it's better to talk than go to war.

He was not talking to a fourth-grade class. He was talking to trade ministers.

What of the charge that the WTO kills endangered species? That it makes people poor? That it takes away national sovereignty?

Nothing.

Bill Culbert, a retired State Department official who participated in the Tokyo Round talks in the 1970s called the other day, fuming.

"No one ever spoke out authoritatively that the essential complaints of the protesters are all utterly and absolutely false," he said. "It is without justification to say that the WTO threatens American sovereignty. No, no, no. Not now, and not ever."

Imagine if Clinton had said that.

Greg Rushford, who writes the free-trade newsletter The Rushford Report, sums up in his latest number, "President Clinton didn't act like the Seattle Round was very important to him."

Exactly. Even Clinton's pet idea, of getting the WTO involved in labor standards, was served up with more syrup than substance. "To pretend that (labor) is not a legitimate issue in many countries is another form of denial," he said.

Certainly, the rights of labor are legitimate issues in any country. The tough question is whether the treatment of workers in country A is an issue only for the government of A, or whether the governments of B, C and D have something to say about it. Should trade agreements attempt to enforce labor standards that are international? Could that be done without snarling trade in a shouting match of nationalisms?

Yes, Clinton said. "We can find a way to do this."

How? He didn't say.

My selective quoting of Clinton is highly unfair. It makes him sound concise. He wasn't.

Clinton has been fudging on trade for a long time. He follows his party's traditional position on trade, which is to keep it open, or else he would never have gone to the mat for NAFTA. But for reasons of party politics, he has not gone to the mat since then. In 1997 he did not lobby until the last minute for fast track, the authority to negotiate a non-amendable agreement. And he lost.

Any WTO agenda will require tough votes in Congress on fast track and on trade with China. Clinton's performance in Seattle suggests that he will let the next president do the arm-twisting.

In Seattle, he could stand up for labor rights and watch the poor countries kick over the table in frustration.

Actual labor rights were never on the table. Nor were actual environmental standards. On the table were farm subsidies, services, anti-dumping and e-commerce. Those have now fallen to the floor. They are just trade stuff, that's all, and the WTO conference, we are told, was about much loftier ambitions.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears Wednesdays. His e-mail address is bruceramsey@seattle-pi.com.

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