ministers also argue that richer countries have an obligation to import more, particularly in the wake of the Asian crisis of 1997, which devastated countries from Thailand to Peru.
The Europeans are mounting an all-out defense of their agricultural markets, currently protected by the E.U.'s complicated, reform-resistant $44 billion in farm supports. And they will fight to maintain their moratorium on the import of genetically modified crops in the face of U.S. and Canadian opposition. E.U. trade commissioner Pascal Lamy is also standing up for what he calls "specific traits of European civilization--the insistence on high-quality foodstuffs, cultural identity in a world without barriers and a reluctance to see some activities reduced to a commercial footing." In other words, protection against too many Disney movies, Pizza Huts and American bankers.
The U.S. agenda has something to annoy everyone. Particularly irksome to Asians is American insistence on reducing tariffs on e-commerce, biotechnology and financial services--industries in which the U.S. clearly leads--and at the same time enforcing anti-dumping legislation on steel imports. Says Chau Tak-hay, Hong Kong's Secretary for Trade and Industry: "The U.S. is single-mindedly pursuing its own narrow agenda while showing little interest in others' needs."
Lined up against all sides is a guerrilla network of activists that has been empowered by the very same forces that drive economic globalization: technology, the Internet and lowered barriers--hence costs--to international travel. Groups such as Kenya's Consumers' Information Network, Ecuador's Acción Ecológica and Trinidad and Tobago's Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action are linked through scores of websites, list servers and discussion groups to North American, European and Asian counterparts. In mid-November five AIDS activists chained themselves to the balcony of U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky's office, protesting WTO patent rules that have made AIDS medicine expensive for poor countries.
In the U.S., the "Mobilization Against Globalization" is stoked by labor unions, who have angrily watched jobs migrate to Mexico and other low-wage countries, spurred by falling tariffs for foreign-made goods. Bowing partly to such concerns, the U.S. Congress has twice refused to give President Clinton expedited trade-negotiating authority, thus defeating efforts to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Their argument couched in moral terms, the unions are allied with U.S. environmental, human-rights and consumer activists in an effort to make social policy through trade. On Nov. 30, the first day of WTO deliberations, the AFL-CIO plans a rally in Seattle led by 900 Boeing machinists, whose employer is one of the world's top exporters. Union delegations representing everyone from teachers to teamsters are flocking in from 25 states and 143 nations. Dockworkers plan to shut down the port. The Puget Sound chapter of Industrial Workers of the World is orchestrating a student walkout. "In the early '80s, we gave up wages and benefits to be more globally competitive," says David Reid, 42, who nonetheless lost his job as a crane driver at Kaiser Aluminum. He has taken a course in civil disobedience. "It clicked," he says. "I am not a victim if I can organize." MORE>>
PAGE 1 | 2
COPYRIGHT © 1999 TIME INC. NEW MEDIA
|
|
