Copyright 2000 The San Diego Union-Tribune
The San
Diego Union-Tribune
November 30, 2000, Thursday
SECTION: OPINION;Pg. B-13:2,6,7; B-7:1
LENGTH: 799 words
HEADLINE:
Globalization after Seattle; Demonstrations halted its unchecked march
BYLINE: Mark Weisbrot; Weisbrot is co-director of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. His latest paper,
"One Year After Seattle: Globalization Revisited" is available at
http://www.cepr.net.
BODY:
One year ago today, the
"Millennium Round" of negotiations for the World Trade Organization collapsed
under the weight of the massive public exposure that it received for the first
time in the streets of Seattle. It was an event that has changed history.
By last May, The New York Times had noted that the opposition had "made
globalization a naughty word," and leading advocates such as International
Monetary Fund Deputy Director Stanley Fischer were looking for "another way of
describing economic integration, if the idea is ever to become popular again."
Congress had ratified America's membership in the
WTO five years before Seattle, but only because nobody was
paying attention. The organization wasted little time in proving to be its
opponents' worst nightmare. Should the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have
the right to set standards for the quality of imported gasoline? Can we decide
that shrimp that is sold in U.S. markets must be caught in a way that minimizes
the killing of sea turtles, in accordance with our Endangered Species Act?
Should Europeans have the right to reject beef that is treated with growth
hormones? In each of these cases the WTO's answer was "no," and so it was
increasingly seen -- especially by environmental and citizens' groups -- as a
threat to national sovereignty and the ability of governments to regulate
commerce in the public interest. Labor, too, saw the immediate threat of an
organization that was willing to write hundreds of pages of rules to protect
corporations, but solemnly declared that the rights of workers were outside of
its jurisdiction.
The WTO has yet to recover from the daylight to which
it was exposed in Seattle. There is still no date for the resumption of the
Millennium Round. Given what was on the agenda, the "Seattle coalition" of
environmental, labor, citizens' groups has certainly done the world a service.
One of the WTO's main agenda items is to proceed with implementation of
its agreement on intellectual property rights. This is much uglier business than
it sounds, when one considers the fate of 25 million Africans now afflicted with
AIDS or HIV. Many, if not most, of these people could be saved if they had
access to anti-AIDS drugs that are now available in the United States. At
patent-protected prices, this would cost tens or even hundreds of billions of
dollars, and is really outside the realm of possibility.
At the cost of
production, the amount required would be a very small fraction of the
patent-protected price, and could be affordable with increased foreign aid. More
than 4 million people have already died, and it is very possible that millions
more will die needlessly, because the principle of enforcing intellectual
property rights internationally is considered to be more important than saving
their lives.
In the last year, the Seattle coalition opened up new
fronts against even more powerful global institutions: the IMF and World Bank.
Like the WTO, these organizations have served to remove decision-making
authority from elected governments to non-elected, unaccountable officials. The
IMF and the World Bank control access to credit -- not only from themselves but
from other sources -- for many countries. As a result, they are able to decide
on the most important economic policies for dozens of countries, often with
disastrous results.
The Seattle coalition has demanded an end to some of
the most destructive practices of the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the
WTO. More than four years ago, under increasing public pressure, the IMF and the
World Bank promised debt relief for 41 "highly indebted poor countries" (HIPC),
but they have been dragging their feet ever since. So far only one country --
Uganda -- has actually had its debt service payments reduced through this
initiative. Meanwhile, the amount of debt service paid by HIPC countries is 25
or 30 times more than the total amount spent on international programs to combat
AIDS.
Despite the lack of reform at the top, there has been progress
over the last year -- most importantly the WTO's indefinite postponement of new
negotiations. The debate has changed, with policy-makers and the press now
accepting some of the criticisms of globalization that were put forth at
Seattle. And just last month advocates for the poor won a significant victory
against the World Bank: the bank agreed, in response to a law passed by
Congress, to end its practice of requiring borrowing governments to impose fees
on poor people for primary education and health care.
Seattle showed
that even the most powerful, unaccountable global institutions were vulnerable
to a grassroots campaign that could subject them to public scrutiny. They still
haven't recovered from the shock.
LOAD-DATE:
December 4, 2000 
