NEWS - Big Business and Democracy o

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Subject: NEWS - Big Business and Democracy on Collision Course at WTO

Big Business and Democracy on Collision Course at WTO

WASHINGTON, (Sep. 15) IPS - Union leaders, environmentalists and
lawmakers joined hands here today to strengthen opposition to further
liberalization of trade rules at an upcoming session of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in Seattle. 

"Big business and democracy are on a collision course, and democracy has
been losing," said Ralph Nader, the well-known consumer advocate lawyer
who heads a number of public interest groups in the United States. 

"The WTO is the greatest surrender of our national, state and local
sovereignty and subordinates our critical health, safety and
environmental standards to the imperatives of international trade,"
Nader told a crowd of protesters at a rally on the steps of Congress. 

Elsewhere around the world, similar gatherings of more than 1,000
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) called for a moratorium on further
trade liberalization negotiations and an assessment of the impact of
past trade rules. 

"The WTO system, rules and procedures are undemocratic, non- transparent
and non-accountable and have operated to marginalize the majority of the
world's people," declared a statement released by environmental and
public interest groups in more than 80 countries. 

Thousands of trade officials from more than 150 countries will gather in
Seattle, Washington at the end of November for the Third WTO Ministerial
conference -- scheduled to be the largest international trade meeting
held on U.S. soil. 

U.S. negotiators plan to launch sweeping new global trade expansion
talks to reduce tariffs, unions, lawmakers, environmentalists and public
interest groups say WTO rules should be overhauled because they
undermine federal, state and local regulations and standards. 

The Geneva-based trade body, for example, ordered Europe to lift its ban
on U.S. beef treated with growth hormones, which some scientists believe
may cause cancer. 

When the European Union refused to comply, the World trade Organization
allowed the United States to impose high tariffs on luxury imports from
Europe. 

U.S. environmentalists were further enraged last year when a WTO dispute
panel ruled against a U.S. law that requires all shrimp sold in this
country to be caught in nets that have turtle escape devices. 

These devices could save the lives of nearly all of the 150,000 sea
turtles that drown in shrimp nets each year, according to marine
scientists. 

Human rights activists also were critical of WTO rules since, under the
auspices of the organization, some countries challenged U.S. state, city
and local laws that barred governments from spending public funds on
businesses that invest in countries notorious for human rights abuses
such as Burma and Nigeria. 

"Instead of creating a global supermarket for U.S. goods and services,
we've created a system of rules that puts more emphasis on property
rights than on human rights," said Sherrod Brown, a democratic
congressman from Ohio. 

At today's rally, Brown joined other democratic representatives
including Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and George Miller of California,
in calling for a reassessment of past trade agreements before pushing
ahead for any further reduction in trade barriers. 

Amid concern about the impact of economic globalization, Pres. Clinton's
previous efforts to obtain "fast-track" authority to negotiate new trade
agreements -- routinely granted to his four predecessors over the last
25 years -- were defeated in the House during the past two years. 

Similar public opposition worldwide led to the defeat of the
Multilateral Agreement on Investments proposed by the world's wealthiest
industrialized nations of the Organization of Economic Community and
Development (OECD). 

Dubbed the "corporate bill of rights" by activists, this treaty would
give investors and corporations the right to sue governments if laws --
including health and safety regulations -- prohibited companies from
making a profit. 

Unions fear that the MAI agenda will reappear within the upcoming trade
negotiations of the WTO and further override worker safety laws. 

"We are having our complete sovereignty undermined," said James Hoffa,
Jr., president of the Teamsters Union, which represents more than one
million members in Canada and the United States. "Under the most
conservative of tests the WTO has not worked and basic worker rights
have come under attack." 

He pointed to the challenge coming from the WTO to France's ban on
asbestos. Hoffa said the trade body also prohibited efforts to ban
products made in developing countries by child labor. 

Other trade agreements, like the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), have only hurt the U.S. economy, he said. 

"In 1993, when we debated NAFTA we actually had a trade surplus with
Mexico while today we have a $20 billion trade deficit," he told the
rally. 

He also said that, since the formation of NAFTA, there had been a trend
toward lowering wages in the United States while U.S. corporations fled
to other countries in search of cheaper workforce and weaker labor
standards. 

U.S. companies already were using NAFTA rules to sue countries, declared
concerned environmentalists who warned that this practice could spread
to other countries as the WTO talks progressed. 

Under NAFTA, for example, when Canada moved to protect its citizens'
health from a potentially harmful U.S. fuel additive, the chemical's
manufacturer, Ethyl Corp., sued on the grounds that this would obstruct
free trade. In July it succeeded in overturning Canadian law. 

Metalclad, another U.S. firm, complained to NAFTA that it had been
prevented from opening a waste disposal plant because of environmental
zoning laws in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi. 

"In many ways, the WTO has failed the most conservative test of all:
'first, do no harm'," said Lori Wallach, director of the
Washington-based Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. 

Opposition also was mounting in Congress regarding a proposed WTO
agreement to eliminate global tariffs on paper and wood products, on the
grounds that it could increase consumption and encourage unsustainable
logging and violate existing U.S. conservation laws. 

A bipartisan groups of 48 members of the House has sent a letter to
Pres. Clinton to withdraw from negotiations over the initiative until an
environmental impact assessment is completed. 

"The WTO was an experiment," said Antonia Juhasz, director of American
Lands Alliance's international trade and forests program. "All we ask is
that the world's governments step back and see how that experiment is
going, before subjecting the world to new WTO agreements." 

Big business does not need a new "bill of rights" under the WTO, added
Daniel Seligman, director of the responsible trade program at the Sierra
Club, a major environmental organization. 

Multinational corporations "need a new, enforceable code of corporate
responsibilities," he said. 

Echoing the concerns of others at the rally, he said tariffs should not
be phased out for forests, fisheries or other sectors "until we fully
understand the environmental impacts."