Broader agenda for WTO

By Peter Bradley -- Logistics Management, 1/1/2000

The arcane world of international trade gained a worldwide audience last month when protesters disrupted the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle.

Unfortunately, the popular press tended to focus on the size of the protest and the small number of protesters who engaged in smashing windows and other destructive acts. Lost in much of the coverage were the very serious issues that drew many to the event. The fact that a WTO meeting could unite environmentalists, organized labor, human rights organizations, and conservatives like Pat Buchanan in common cause speaks to how important those issues are to a large number of people. As a result of the protests, world trade regulation has suddenly become a major issue in the coming presidential and congressional elections. The agenda for future WTO talks has been permanently enlarged.

The 135-member WTO is intended to ensure that member nations trade with one another fairly, and its rules are supposedly designed for that purpose. But fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Many opponents of the organization believe the rules are skewed in favor of big business and against workers and environmental protection. Conservative critics like Buchanan contend that the WTO infringes on national sovereignty, and unions argue that the rules make it easy for businesses to export good jobs.

Supporters of the WTO insist that freer trade means greater prosperity for all, and for the most part, that is true. But the protesters are right, too, in insisting that the rules not be devised in ways that provide advantage to businesses that abuse workers or the environment. Businesses in the United States must abide by laws that protect air and water quality and threatened species. They must meet standards for worker safety. Those restrictions all carry costs. Trade rules that allow access to our markets for businesses that don't have to meet minimal labor and environmental standards are difficult to abide. But the United States can hardly insist that the rest of the world provide pay and benefits equal to those of U.S. workers, nor can it demand that other nations enforce stringent environmental rules. Poor nations, with reason, see any such efforts as impediments to their own development.

Clearly, reconciling widely divergent views about how trade rules should treat environmental and labor issues will be extraordinarily difficult. But, thanks in large part to the protests in Seattle, those issues are on the WTO table, where they have always belonged. And they will not go away.