WTO Secrets

Bruce Silverglade / Sierra Nov/Dec00

After last year's calamitous meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, President Clinton declared that trade proceedings should be more open to the public. The WTO's leaders had other plans, however. Earlier this year in Washington, D.C., the Cordell Hull Institute, a pro-free-trade think tank, put on a seminar called "After Seattle: Restoring Momentum in the WTO." Most of the attendees were high-ranking current and former international trade officials, congressional staff, and lawyers and consultants representing multinational corporations. Then there was me, legal director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. As far as the public went, I was it.

The seminar was essentially a strategy session on how to stifle WTO critics, who argue that the organization undermines national environmental, consumer, and labor laws. The meeting was kicked off by Lord Parkinson,

British secretary of state for trade and industry under Margaret Thatcher, who proclaimed that "we must never have another VITO meeting on U.S. soil" because it is too easy for advocacy groups to organize here. He called Clinton's acknowledgment of protesters' concerns "disgraceful," then expressed vexation that delegates had to survive on sandwiches during three days of social protest by 40,000 people. Finally, Parkinson opined that the staff of the WTO secretariat should not be balanced with people from developing countries just "because of the color of their skin." Here followed a few hushed words with the chair of the meeting. "Oh, I hope I have not offended anyone," Parkinson added.

American officials picked up on Parkinson's concerns. Robert Litan, a former associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, endorsed giving public interest groups "other sandboxes to play in," by having them take their concerns to the International Labor Organization, a toothless United Nations-sponsored group in Geneva, Switzerland. Clayton Yeutter, a former U.S. special trade representative, concurred that the next WTO meeting should be held outside the United States, suggesting that the public be given "little advance notice" so as to "keep the protesters off balance." He said that critics didn't really want to participate-all they wanted was "to get TV coverage and raise money for their organizations."

The day ended with a fine dinner and an address by Brazil's foreign minister Luiz Felipe Lamreia, who gave an impassioned speech opposing core labor standards and defending child labor. In one region of Brazil, he said, more than 5,000 children "help their families earn a little extra money" by hauling bags of coal from a dump yard to a steel mill. His remarks were greeted by hearty applause.

On the way home, I thought of a world where children haul coal on their backs, and had trouble digesting my meal.