The Xation.

20.

6,1999

THE CORPORATE-DOMINATED TRADING SYSTEM IS BEING CALLED T O ACCOUNT.

ts billed as the Battle in Seattle. In the suites

will be the representatives of 135 nations
gathered for the Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization,hosted
by the Clinton Administration. On the streets
will be a raucous gathering ranging from US
environmentalists and union members to the
Zapatistas from Mexico and JosC Bove, the
French sheep farmer who became a folk hero
when he tore the roof off a local McDonalds
with his tractor.
For Clinton, Seattle is legacy time. M e r having presided over
the US. adoption of NAFTA and the WTO, and the agreement on
Chinas entrance into the trade organization, Clinton wants the
Seattle meetings to launch a new millennia1round of global
trade negotiations that he can portray as a historic achievement.
Calling for the WTO to open up, to pay at least nominal attention
to labor rights and the environment, Clinton will restate his
commitment to putting a human face on the global economy
while celebrating the progress of globalization on his watch.
For the demonstrators, Seattle will mark the rising tide of opposition to that same corporate-dominatedtrading system. At the
last WTO conference, in Geneva in May 1998, the protests of
thousands caught officials by surprise. The even larger protests in
Seattle will put all on notice: The era of baclroom deals among
private interests is over. Indeed, the Clinton years may be remembered less for the triumph of the corporate trading system that he
has promoted than for the beginning of the struggle to call it to account. At the very least, from now on the future will be contested.
The WTO has been in existence for only five years, overseeing
and enforcing the trade accords that countries have signed on to.
Globalizationpreceded the WTO and would have proceeded without it. So why is it such a lightning rod? To understand what is at
stake in Seattle, it is worth stepping back to get the context.
Over the past quarter-century, transnational corporations and
banks forged a new global economy, with the flow of goods,
services and particularly money across national lines expanding
exponentially.Apologists paint this as an act of nature, driven by
revolutions in technology, communications and transportation.
But markets are made, not born. This global market was constructed by and for global corporations,aided by a forceful assertion of state power. When conservatives seized the commanding
heights of the industrial world starting in the seventies-Thatcher
in Britain, Reagan in the U$ed States, Kohl in Germany-a new
consensus formed on privatization, deregulation, fiscal austerity
and free trade. Indebted developing countries were force-fed
what became known as the Washington consensusby their creditors, with the International Monetary Fund acting as Big Nurse.
L.
of

editor of The Nation, is co-director

The WTO is the culmination of this process.

Former
director-generalRenato Ruggiero chari
acterized the task as creating the constitution
of a single global economy. The impetus behind
it was the desire of global corporations and
banks to regulate the world economy in their
interest-setting global standards, protecting
t;
5 investments, enforcing patents, quashing nonconforming local and national laws and regula8 tions. The various agreements that the WTO
enforces were initialedby the member countries,
but they were largely drafted by and for corporations. For example, a coalition of corporations including Monsanto, Du Pont,
Merck and other giants helped draft the US position in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations on patents and copyrights.
Needless to say, the end agreement-hammered out behind closed
doors by the rich economies and foisted on the poor ones-protected the interests of the wealthy, not those of the small fanners,
subsistencepeasants or consumers of the world.
The global economy that the WTO is now intended to police
has worked remarkably well for the multinationals. By 1999 the
United Nations Development Program was reporting that multinationals accounted for a third of all global exports. A wave
of cross-border mergers is creating megacorporations. The ten
largest corporations in each sector controlled 86 percent of the
telecommunicationsindustry, 85 percent of the pesticides industry, 70 percent of the computer industry, 35 percent of pharmaceuticals, 32 percent of commercial seed. The combined assets
of the three wealthiest billionaireswere more than the combined
GNP of the forty-eight least-developed countries.
ut the new economy has not worked very well for most
working people. By 1999,200 million more people lived
in abject poverty (on less than $1 a day) than in 1987. Inequality has grown both between and within countries.
Only thirty-three countxies achieved sustained 3 percenti
annual growth in GNP from 1980 to 1996. In fifty-nine coun-!
tries, primarily those in sub-Saharan Africa and the former
Eastern bloc, GNP per capita actually declined. Environmental
despoliation is getting worse. The Nike economy saw the rebirth of the satanic mills-child labor, young women working
for a pittance in export-processing zones where union organizers are routinely fired, beaten or killed.
Even in the advanced countries that should have benefited the
most from the system, workers havent fared particularly well. In
Europe, slow growth has left millions unemployed. Japan has
suffered a decade of decline. In the UnitedStates,now basking
in its extended growth, wages declined after the mid-seventies
and still have not recovered the ground lost over those years. Inequality has hit new heights, while most fanilies actually have
less net worth now than they did two decades ago.

6.1999

T,heNation.

Opponents of all this were generally dismissed as protectionist

victims-the turtles, as New Yo& Times columnistTom Friedman dubbed them-who just couldnt keep up. But then, beginning in 1997, the opposition showed its clout in the United
States. An unlikely coalition of progressives concerned about
labor rights and the environment and isolationist conservatives
blocked fast-track presidentia1,tradeauthority twice. The political defeat was reinforcedby the global financial crisis-the worst
since the Great Depression--which shook the confidence pf the
financial elite.
Since that time, the Clinton Administration has been scr-ambling to contain and co-opt the rising opposition.The Jubilee 2000
movement, a coalition of religious and secular groups, forced
. wealthy countries to put debt relief for the most impoverished
countries on the global agenda. A coalition of labor, consumers
and environmentaliststorpedoed negotiations on the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment, which would have pushed financial
deregulation m h e r . Cpnsumer revolts, led by students against
sweatshops,had companies like Nike scramblingfor the cover of
codes of conduct.
resident Clintons response was to adopt the rhetoric of reform, calling on the WTO to be more open, pushing the International Labor Organizationto promote a ban on the worst
forms of child labor, supporting a working group on labor
rights at the WTO. But as Seattles streets will illustrate, the
Presidents gestures wont suffice. By its very existence,the WTO
strips away the myth of free trade. That becomes even clearer as its
secretive panels of corporate trade lawyers and experts challenge
national laws that conflict with WTO rules-a European ban on
hormone-treatedmeat, a US law to protect dolphins, a Massachusetts law to boycott Burma. If the global economy is regulated,
people will demand that its regulations reflect more than the private interests of corporations and banks. As AFL-CIO president
John Sweeney has made clear, labor will applaud progress on a
worldng group to study labor rights qat the WTO but will not end
the demand for enforceablelabor rights in trade accords. The real tests wont come in Seattle. They will come in continuing battles on fast track, environmental regulation and f%ture
trade accords. They will come when the US trade deficit becomes
unsustainable. They will come as developing countries turn away
from export-led growth. It iS only ifthe corporateproject is stalled
that governmentswill be forced to respond to their people.
The current moment is akin to the last period of Progressivereform at the tum of the centmy At that time corpbratetrustsand
banks forged a national economy that featured the stark inequalities of sweatshops in the GildedAge. To consolidatetheir position,
pre-empt local and state regulation, manage competitionand limit
instability and protest, the cocporate leaders wielded their political
, clout to develop new national regulatory laws and authorities.
But a rising tide of popular movements-unions, womens movements, socialist and populist parties-forced broader reforms.
Over time, national laws were passed to enforce the forty-hour
week, a minimum wage, consumerand environmentalprotections,
the right to.organize,prohibitions on child labor. But each concession was bitterly fought. In the end, it took a Great Depression and
World War I1 to make significantprogress.
The struggle to civilize the global economy has just begun.

21

Progress will be slow; the resistancG will be fierce. Perhaps the

agonies of the past century of reform will. make the way easier
in the next. But as the demonstrators in Seattle would say, dont
count on it.