Copyright 2000 Federal News Service, Inc.
Federal News Service
February 8, 2000, Tuesday
SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 5429 words
HEADLINE:
PREPARED TESTIMONY OF TESTIMONY OF AMBASSADOR CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY U.S. TRADE
REPRESENTATIVE
BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON
WAYS AND MEANS SUBCOMMITTEE ON TRADE
SUBJECT - NEXT STEPS AT THE
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
BODY:
Chairman
Crane, Congressman Levin, Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you very
much for this opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee on our agenda at
the World Trade Organization over the coming year. I appreciate this opportunity
to review our assessment of the WTO after five years, the events at last year's
Ministerial Conference, the negotiations and other work we have under way in the
year 2000.
INTRODUCTION
Our agenda for the year 2000 ranges from
opening negotiations on agriculture and services as mandated by the Uruguay
Round Agreement of 1994; to implementing and enforcing existing agreements,
including several now coming fully into force; promoting the full integration of
the least developed countries into the trading system; institutional reform at
the WTO, with a focus on strengthening transparency; and the accession of new
members, in particular China, to the organization. At the same time, we are
working with other WTO members for consensus on a new Round. To reach such a
consensus, as the President has said. all WTO members will have to show
flexibility and accept their share of the responsibility for success. My
testimony will review each of these points, but will open with a more basic
review of the record of the WTO over the past five years. And here the immediate
point is clear. That is, the trading system is fundamentally sound and our
participation in it is profoundly in America's interest. While the Ministerial
Conference in Seattle was unable to agree on an agenda for a new negotiating
Round, and the WTO has received some criticism from its members and from outside
as well, on the whole the WTO is fulfilling its mission of opening new
opportunities, promoting sustainable development, raising living standards and
strengthening peace.
As the President recently said, there is no
substitute for the confidence and credibility the WTO offers the world as trade
grows. WTO membership opens world markets to our goods and
services, and helps us take advantage of our competitiveness in agriculture,
manufacturing and high-tech industries. It advances the rule of law in commerce,
and promotes stability during economic crisis. And thus our participation and
leadership in the WTO is of critical importance.Criticisms, both from within the
WTO and from outside, deserve a respectful hearing and the WTO must respond to
the legitimate issues they raise. But these were not the fundamental reason the
Ministerial conference did not launch a new Round. Rather, the WTO's 135 members
reached an unfortunate, but familiar, impasse on some of the major policy
issues. The impasse will not fix itself; but if WTO members remember history and
first principles, focus more intently on the shared benefits we derive from the
open markets and rule of lax,,, represented by the WTO, and accept the shared
responsibilities of developing the trading system, we can break the deadlock and
move ahead.
THE CONTEXT
Our first challenge is to place the
Ministerial in its proper context.
Today's WTO has its roots in the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, created under President Truman
after the Second World War. The leaders of the time acted in the light of their
personal experience: they had seen the Smoot-Hawley Act in America and similar
protectionist policies overseas deepen the Depression and contribute to the
political upheavals of the 1930s. Fifteen years later, they believed that by
reopening world markets they could promote growth and raise living standards;
and that as open markets gave nations greater stakes in stability and prosperity
beyond their borders, a fragile peace would strengthen.
The work they
began has proceeded through five decades. Over time, as we and others abandoned
the closed markets of the Depression era, we have strengthened peace by
integrating first Germany and Japan, then the post-colonial world, and now the
countries moving away from communist planning systems into a modern economic
world. And we have fostered what amounts to a fifty-year economic boom during
which the world economy grew six-fold per capita income nearly tripled, and
hundreds of millions of families escaped from poverty.
Most recently,
with completion of the Uruguay Round and Congress' passage of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act in 1994, we made a fundamental advance: going well beyond the
GATT agreements in addressing agriculture and services; protecting intellectual
property rights; and strengthening our ability to enforce all the agreements
covered by the WTO. In the WTO itself we created a small but efficient
organization, with a very small budget and professional staff, to serve as a
venue by which governments can agree by consensus on measures in the general
interest. This is evident in the substantial further progress we have made since
1995, in conclusion of the landmark multilateral agreements on Information
Technology, Basic Telecommunications and Financial Services.
Taken as a
whole, these achievements have substantially improved the world trade
environment and its institutions, in ways including:
- Expansion of the
Rule of Law: In just five years, the 50 year-old trading system has been
transformed from a complex set of rules and disciplines that applied fully to a
relatively few members to a system where the rules apply to all members (subject
to transitions) eliminating the potential for "free riders" on the benefits of
an open trading system.
- Dispute Settlement: Today, WTO Members rely on
a set of procedures for the prompt settlement of disputes, eliminating many of
the shortcomings of the earlier GATT system where the process could drag out
indefinitely. While improvements to the system are still warranted, the greater
certainty of the new system has led to a more prompt resolution of disputes and
greater predictability in the application of rules.
- Market Access in
traditional and new areas of commerce: Globally, the Uruguay Round is reducing
manufacturing tariffs by a third; American farmers and ranchers are finding
export opportunities, as a result of the first real commitments to reduce
barriers and limit the use of export subsidies; for the first time in the
history of the trading system services providers have also recorded real export
opportunities, from accounting to telecommunications services providers. New
entrants into the global marketplace, particularly small and medium-sized
enterprises, are also benefitting from these new market openings and
innovations.
- Intellectual Properly Rights Protection: WTO member
governments have accepted a landmark set of rules for protection of patents,
copyrights, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property. This both
protects the research and innovation of Americans in our most competitive
industries, and creates incentives for further investment and technological
progress worldwide.
- Global Membership: The WTO has grown by 50%, from
the 90 members which joined to launch the Uruguay Round in 1986 to 135 in 1999,
with another 30 members seeking to negotiate entry. More stringent requirements
for membership mean acceptance of WTO rules helps to open markets to American
products and promote domestic economic reform.
This is especially
important for countries emerging from communist planning systems and seeking to
establish market-based economies. Thus, membership in the WTO is a key element
in newly emerging economies in Eastern Europe, in Asia, and in the Middle East.
African nations as well are participating more fully in the WTO than in the
past.
Creation of a dynamic/forum for trade liberalization: In
establishing the WTO, we created a system that is responsive to rapid changes in
technology and the needs of the 21st century. The WTO first set in motion and
then realized agreements in financial services, basic telecommunications
services and information technology, whose outcomes are larger in scope than the
totality of the results of the Uruguay Round; and by setting a built-in agenda
to continue in agriculture and services this year.
- High Technology:
The dynamism of the WTO has kept the trading system current with technological
development, providing real benefits to business and consumers - through its
work on the Information Technology Agreement, Basic Telecommunications,
Financial Services, electronic commerce and other initiatives. Since the Basic
Telecommunications Agreement came into effect, for example, rates paid by U.S.
consumers for international service to most foreign destinations have declined
significantly. From 1996 to 1998, the average price of an international long
distance call declined from 74 cents per minute to 55 cents per minute, a 25%
decline. On highly competitive routes, such as the U.S.-UK route, prices have
fallen even more dramatically, to as low as 10 cents per minute. Although
aggregate data for 1999 are not yet available, indications are that the trend
toward lower rates has continued and that the current average price worldwide is
well below 55 cents per minute.
- World Economic Stability: The WTO has
also strengthened the world's ability to address economic crises. During the
financial crisis of 1997 and 1998, for example, the respect WTO members,
including ourselves, showed for open market commitments helped to prevent a
cycle of protection and retaliation similar to that of the Depression era,
ensuring affected countries the access to markets they needed for recovery, and
minimizing damage to American farmers and manufacturing exporters.
-
Greater Openness and Accountability: While, as I will note later, we are not
satisfied with the WTO's progress toward full transparency, we also recognize
that in five years, the WTO has moved forward on these issues by making a
majority of its documents available to the public, reaching out via symposia and
other means to the NGO community and by creating a Web page. All of the WTO
Ministerial Meetings held thus far - in Singapore, Geneva and Seattle - have
enjoyed strong NGO participation.
THE WTO IN AMERICA'S ECONOMIC BOOM
These policy achievements, in turn, have helped to facilitate an
expansion of American goods and services exports, despite the effects of the
Asian financial crisis, by 55% since 1992. This is especially important, as
export-related jobs typically pay 10-15% above the average U.S. wage. Together
with domestic policy measures such as the improvement of fiscal discipline since
1993 and increased investment in education, the trading system has thus made a
remarkable contribution to our prosperity in the past five years. By opening
markets, advancing the rule of law and promoting competition, the WTO has
contributed to a record of:
- Growth: The U.S. economy has grown by
$2.2 trillion, from $7.0 trillion in 1992 to
$9.2 trillion in 1999. To put this figure in context, only two
countries in the world apart from the United States have a GDP totaling
$2 trillion or greater.
- Jobs: U.S. employment has
grown by over 20 million, as unemployment levels dropped from 7.3% to 4.0%. This
is the lowest unemployment rate since January of 1970.
- Rising Living
Standards: American living standards are rising, as hourly wages for
nonsupervisory workers are up by 6.8%. At the same time, openness to imports has
helped to keep inflation low, broaden choice and improve consumer prices
especially for basic household necessities. This is especially important for the
poorest families.
- Investment: Since creation of the WTO, U.S.
non-residential business investment has risen at 10.8% per year.
-
Shared Benefit: Americans have broadly benefitted from our expansion, with
poverty rates falling to the lowest level measured since 1979, and unemployment
at record lows for African-Americans and Hispanics.
A final point to
note is that in the past five years, the U.S.' share of world foreign direct
investment has sharply increased, with foreign countries investing more than
$400 billion in America. Many had expressed fears that a more
open world would promote investment in countries with weaker labor and
environmental standards. Investment decisions obviously have many causes, but
experience shows that our high standards have not been any sort of a deterrent
to investment in the United States.
REASONS FOR SEATTLE DEADLOCK Let me
now turn to an analysis of the Ministerial, and then to our next steps.
As the record -- both of the past five years and of the past fifty --
indicates, developing the trading system has been work of profound importance.
It has therefore always been difficult: nations always have entrenched interests
which benefit from the status quo, and at each point along the road, governments
must make politically difficult choices to serve the greater good.
It
should therefore be no surprise that we at times have encountered deadlocks.
This happened at the creation of the trading system, in which the founding of
the GATT in 1948 built upon a failure to set up an "International Trade
Organization" in 1947. The creation of the WTO five years ago followed a failed
attempt to launch a Round in 1982, a mid-term breakdown in 1988, and failures to
conclude the Round in 1990 and 1993. More recent negotiations on financial
services and telecommunications also broke down in 1996 and 1997, in all cases
to be followed by success.
The experience in Seattle was similar to many
of these previous negotiating deadlocks. While broadly supportive of a Round, a
number of major WTO members were reluctant to commit themselves to a negotiating
agenda covering issues that are genuinely difficult.
Most important, any
new Round must clearly have as a central goal the rapid reform of agricultural
trade. This is a commitment the WTO made long ago, when in 1995 it adopted a
"built-in agenda" requiring the opening of agricultural talks this year. This
poses a special challenge to the European Union and Japan. However, developing
countries also have diverse interests and agendas, which a Round must take into
account, and we in the U.S. have sensitive areas as well. All of us must be
willing to look hard at our agendas and consider ways to accommodate a number of
the concerns of our trading partners to move forward.
We knew well
before the Ministerial, of course, that a new Round would involve difficult
issues. But an agenda that does not take on the difficult issues is one of
little real-world consequence. Over the long run, WTO members have been able to
overcome their differences: on this occasion they did not. WTO members began to
harden their positions rather than coming to consensus, and the negotiations
proved unable to bridge the gaps.
WTO AGENDA FOR 2000
Since
then, we have been consulting with our trading partners and with
Director-General Moore on ways to move ahead. As we do so, we view it as of
fundamental importance that the WTO acts on the issues immediately before it:
the implementation of core agreements under the Uruguay Round, the opportunity
to promote development and integration for the poorer countries, the decision by
China and a number of other countries to join the WTO and the commitment made in
1995 to open negotiations on agriculture and services this year.
1.
Implementation of Agreements
To begin with, a set of WTO agreements
covering intellectual property, trade-related investment measures, customs
valuation and other issues come fully into force this year, when remaining
transitions expire. It is crucial that this proceed smoothly. We are meeting our
own commitments, of course, in areas such as textiles. And in case of outright
refusal to keep promises, we will not hesitate to use dispute settlement to
enforce compliance.
But we also recognize that these agreements are
complex.
Some countries have genuine difficulty implementing them
despite making sincere efforts to do so. In such cases, our preferred approach
is to work through the problems on a practical, constructive and pragmatic
basis. That is the best way to ensure that we address the fundamental concerns
countries have, and preserve the integrity of the balance of rights and
obligations all of us have taken up. Likewise, we are willing to review concerns
others may have about our own implementation of agreements.
2. Least
Developed Nations
WTO members must also act with greater generosity of
spirit toward the least developed countries.
Part of this is greater
market access for the poorest countries. We are prepared to do this
unilaterally, as the President stressed in his State of the Union Address, by
securing passage this >,ear of legislation further opening U.S. markets to
goods from Africa and the Caribbean. This is of fundamental importance to growth
and sustainable development for the people of these regions, and will also help
them become better markets for our own products.
Equally crucial, we
must develop better means to help these countries participate fully in the
trading system. Many of them come to the table with less experience in trade
policy and at times fewer resources to devote to it. They often rightly feel
they have difficulty in asserting their rights and interests in the WTO. A
proposal we introduced last year, together with Bangladesh, Lesotho, Nigeria,
Senegal and Zarnbia, to improve the technical assistance and capacity-building
programs available from the WTO and other international institutions, can serve
as a starting point.
3. WTO Accession for China and Others
Likewise, the WTO is considering the accession of 31 economies. A number
of these negotiations are well advanced: we expect Jordan and Georgia to enter
in the very near future: we have also completed our bilateral negotiations with
Albania, China, Croatia, and Taiwan: and have had significant progress with a
number of other countries. Each case will mean significant trade liberalization,
bounded by the rule of law.
Let me say a few special words about the
completion of China's entry into the WTO. This is a critical goal for the WTO
this year. The economic liberalization and opening to the world China will make
as part of its WTO accession have the potential to support reform in China,
create opportunities for China's trading partners, and ultimately help to
stabilize peace in the Pacific. And simply from the perspective of the trading
system, a status quo in which the world's third-largest economy does not need to
follow WTO rules is an enormous source of distortion and uncertainty. The China
accession is thus a central task for the WTO, and must move ahead this year.
This will require expeditious action, first of all by those WTO members
which have yet to complete their own negotiations with China, and second by the
entirety of the WTO's membership on rules issues. It is a
complex task, but one which is manageable for the WTO and should be completed
soon. As part of this process, the United States must grant China permanent NTR
or risk losing the full benefits of the agreement we negotiated, including
special import protections, and rights to enforce China's commitments through
WTO dispute settlement, among other means. If Congress were to refuse to grant
permanent NTR, our Asian and European competitors will reap these benefits of
the agreement we negotiated with China, but American farmers and businesses may
well be left behind.
4. Built-In Agenda Negotiations and Work Toward New
Round
Finally, with this work proceeding, we must look to the future.
The core elements of the negotiating agenda are before us, in the opening of
talks on agriculture and services, as required under the "built-in agenda" WTO
members agreed upon in 1995. These are the sectors in which markets remain most
distorted and closed, and in which the opening of trade will mean perhaps most
to future prospects for rising living standards, technological progress, and
sustainable development.
I am pleased to report that WTO Members are
moving forward on this agenda. The WTO General Council yesterday set dates for
the initial meetings for the negotiations on services and agriculture, and our
expectation is that the important work for those negotiations will proceed. That
will include the development of negotiating proposals this year. a matter on
which we will be consulting with Members, the private sector and other
interested Americans in the days ahead. The work has just begun, and we will
soon publish a notice in the Federal Register seeking comments from all
interested parties as we begin the process of developing proposals for these
negotiations. But our view of the initial steps is as follows:
- In
agriculture, the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, with binding commitments on
market access, export subsidies and domestic support, provides the basis on
which to pursue further agricultural reform. Useful preparatory work has already
been accomplished through the WTO Committee on Agriculture over the last three
years, where countries have identified key issues and their interests.
We are now working with other countries to ensure discussions in Geneva
focus on substantive reform proposals. Our work last year enabled us to identify
general negotiating objectives, such as eliminating export subsidies; reducing
tariffs: expanding market access opportunities for products subject to tariff
rate quotas, including better disciplines on the administration of those TRQ's;
reducing trade-distorting domestic support levels; and ensuring that the
operation of agricultural state trading entities are more market- oriented. We
also want to ensure access for biotechnology products.
We are now
developing specific proposals to implement these objectives. While specific
negotiating timelines have not been established by the Uruguay Round, the
expiration of the agricultural "peace clause" in 2003, and continued domestic
farm reform efforts in the United States, Europe and other countries, should
help to move the negotiations forward.
- In services, we are developing
negotiating proposals for a wide range of sectors where our companies have
strong commercial interests, including, energy services, environmental services,
audiovisual services, express delivery, financial services, telecommunications,
professional services, education and training, private healthcare, travel and
tourism, and other sectors. Our companies are poised to be among the primary
beneficiaries from stronger services commitments in the WTO.
Broadly
speaking, our objectives are to remove restrictions on services trade and ensure
non-discriminatory treatment. We also need to ensure that the commitments we
obtain accurately reflect our companies' range of commercial activities. For
example, the GATS definition of environmental services does not include
recycling services, an area where U.S. companies are leaders. We want to fix
this and similar deficiencies in the GATS.
Our proposals must also
reflect the many different means U.S. service providers use to meet the needs of
their foreign customers. This includes U.S. companies that establish operations
overseas - for example, as a branch or subsidiary; that deliver their services
electronically - by phone, fax, or the Internet; or that depend on individual
personnel to "export" services - for example, Americans that perform short-term
consultancy services in a foreign country.
Beyond these mandated
negotiations, we have pressing needs to address market access concerns in
non-agricultural products, electronic commerce, issues related to trade and the
environment, trade facilitation, and perhaps other topics as well. Thus, while
there are a number of different options for proceeding with trade liberalization
beyond the agricultural and services sectors, we working to build consensus for
a new Round.
To build a consensus for such a Round will not be a simple
task. However, the outlines can be drawn, if WTO members prove willing to
rethink some of their positions, focus more fully on the shared benefits of
success, and find the balance that allows us to move ahead. As the President has
said, we will keep working toward consensus; we are willing to be flexible, and
expect our trading partners to do the same.
WTO REFORM
Finally,
let me turn to the criticisms the WTO has received and the questions of
institutional reform.
The protests and internal criticisms of the WTO
were not at the heart of the negotiating impasse in Seattle. However, they raise
issues that require a response.
Only through openness and willingness to
listen to its critics will the trading system retain the broad support of the
public and its member governments over time.
This does not mean that all
criticisms are valid. Indeed, part of the response must be a rejection of
unsubstantiated and more radical criticisms. The core vision of the trading
system is right: opening markets in the past decades has sparked growth, reduced
poverty and strengthened peace. The creation of the WTO here in the United
States has brought this still further: by cutting tariffs, it has been the
equivalent of a $750 billion global tax cut, whose benefit goes
largely to less prosperous families which devote more of their income to food
and basic necessities. It has helped America's farmers, working people and
businesses find new markets overseas. And as our import growth has shown, it has
helped to raise living standards, dampened inflationary pressures and broadened
consumer choice, while creating new opportunities for our trading partners. Most
recently, during the Asian financial crisis the respect WTO members showed for
open market commitments helped to prevent a cycle of protection and retaliation
similar to that of the Depression area, ensuring affected countries the access
to markets they needed for recovery, and minimizing damage to farmers and
manufacturing exporters worldwide.
To begin reversing the work we have
done would be irresponsible and damaging in the extreme. Workers in poorer
countries would lose jobs as industrial markets closed: living standards of the
poor in America and other industrialized countries would fall as the price of
food, clothing, shoes and other essential goods rose. Hopes of rising labor and
environmental standards would be deferred, as countries which suffer from
grinding poverty have little time or resources for clean air enforcement and
factory inspection. And a crucial support for peace would weaken, as the stake
nations now have in one another's prosperity and stability beyond their borders
diminished.
But the WTO must also be willing to listen to and act upon
legitimate criticisms and incorporate new ideas. Most immediately, it must
address concerns about transparency which are valid and can be easily remedied.
This is especially important in dispute settlement, where the current practice
is to close arguments to the public. Historically, the practice dates from an
earlier era, in which dispute settlement largely meant mediation and
negotiation. But today, dispute settlement is a more adjudicative process. In
such a process, what once was privacy becomes a harmful secrecy that reduces
public confidence in decisions.
If this remains unchanged, public
confidence in the system will erode. As a first step, at our US-EU Summit in
December, we proposed that we and the EU, as the largest users of WTO dispute
settlement, immediately agree to open the arguments in our transatlantic
disputes. Thus far, to our regret, the EU has refused. But it is quite clear
that this issue threatens to erode public confidence in the WTO and its work,
and must be addressed sooner rather than later.
Likewise, the WTO's
internal processes can be improved and updated. Since 1986, when the Uruguay
Round opened, the WTO has grown by over 50%, from 90 to 135 members, with more
to follow this year. It is not only larger but more diverse, ranging from the
world's most developed to its poorest countries, and covering each point of the
spectrum in between. Each of these members has different priorities and
interests, adding to the complexity of negotiations. Over time we should develop
a more effective means of ensuring both participation and efficient
consensus-building. Director-General Moore has begun consultations with WTO
members toward this end. However, as we address the issue, we must be careful
not to alter the principle of consensus for decision- making in the WTO. And we
must also ensure that such procedural discussions do not distract us from taking
immediate action on core policy issues.
There are also clear areas in
which the WTO can do more to help environmental protection. These include
elimination of environmentally abusive subsidies, such as fishery subsidies
which contribute to over- fishing; elimination of barriers to trade in
environmental goods and services; and the disciplining of agricultural
subsidies, including the elimination of agricultural export subsidies.
And we believe the WTO can contribute to the advance of internationally
recognized core labor standards. Its current refusal to discuss the links
between trade and labor cannot be .justified. It can also cooperate more
actively with the International Labor Organization on a number of issues.
We should also, however, draw lessons for the future from our experience
in Seattle in these areas. While our environmental proposals won a substantial
amount of support, we received at times intense criticism for pressing to open a
discussion of trade and labor. If we are to move forward, I believe we must
address more effectively the reasons many developing countries are suspicious of
these discussions. Few want to specialize in low-wage industries: almost all
would prefer highly skilled, healthy and prosperous work- forces. But most also
fear discrimination against their products that would block development and
perpetuate poverty. Clearly, our proposals in this area have no such intention
and would have no such effect. But if the trading system is to play a role in
achieving the shared goal of improving labor standards -- as it should -- we
must find ways to allay these concerns.
USTR BUDGET
Finally, Mr.
Chairman, in the context of our ability to meet the totality of these
challenges, let me raise one final issue.
Yesterday, the president
transmitted his budget to the Congress. In it, he is recommending funding for
USTR at $28.3 million and 190 staff. This represents an
increase of $2.8 million and 12 full-time positions. In
addition, the President's initiative on enforcement includes additional
resources for our agency. Thus, this budget, like the previous two the President
has submitted, calls for funding increases, to match the escalating workload our
agency has at home and worldwide.
As you know, USTR is certainly one of
the leanest and I believe most cost-effective agencies in the Federal
government. When we began, we were an agency designed to coordinate policy,
drawing on the resources of other agencies. Today, we have tremendous statutory
obligations, together with complicated and demanding interactions with nearly
200 foreign trade partners and a very wide spectrum of Americans. As the
Appropriations Committee begins considering this budget request, I ask your
support as our authorizers for the addition of these 12 new positions to our
team. To fulfill our mission most effectively, we need additional support not
only at the WTO, but with respect to agriculture, Africa, China, Japan and
several other areas. I hope you will support this request.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, then, the WTO faces a number of challenges in the coming
year, from proceeding on the built-in agenda for agriculture and services, to
implementing prior agreements, bringing in new members, improving the ability of
the least developed countries to participate, reforming its institutions, and
working toward a new Round. To meet these challenges is a responsibility that
all WTO members share. None of these are easy or simple; but others have
shouldered equally difficult tasks in the past.
And the record of the
past fifty years should give us a great deal of confidence. Taken as a whole,
the multilateral trading system has promoted the rule of law, created new
opportunities for worldwide economic growth, and created opportunities for
Americans. This amply justifies the decision Congress took five years ago to
support creation of the WTO as a successor to the GATT. And it should remind us
how significant will be the rewards of success as we take up the challenges of
the new century.
END
LOAD-DATE: February 9,
2000