The Meeting: The Battle In Seattle

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If the Seattle host committee, chaired by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Boeing CEO Philip Condit, fears that protests can overshadow the event, trade diplomats are even more concerned that the negotiations themselves could implode. As of late last week, the agenda had yet to be set, despite marathon discussions in Geneva. That will put even more pressure on the delegates in Seattle, working within shouting distance of protesters. Says Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew: "I'm preoccupied by the zoo Seattle might be turned into."

There are too many conflicting goals and alliances to count. Developing countries grouse that they are opening their markets but with little benefit. They want more time to comply with rules on financial services and intellectual property, the latter jealously guarded by U.S. multinationals. Third World 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 will be mounting an all-out defense of their agricultural markets, currently protected by the European Union's devilishly 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 (see page 49). European Union 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 Accion Ecologica and Trinidad and Tobago's Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action are linked through scores of websites, list servers and discussion groups to U.S., European and Asian counterparts. Last week 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, Congress has twice refused to give President Clinton expedited trade-negotiating authority, thus defeating efforts to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement.