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The US has not seen anything like the protests in Seattle in a long time but any resemblance to liberal and left-wing protests of the 1970s and 1960s is purely superficial. Apart from the anarchists without whom no demonstrations are complete, a whole range of interests was represented by NGOs, trade unionists and environmental groups.
Some demanded trade with Cuba, members of Greenpeace demonstrated for ``safe trade'' and others against the exploitation of poor countries. But the dominant voices captured by the media were those of domestic American discontent: people viscerally opposed to the power of big corporations and groups who fear competition from developing countries and demand labour and environmental linkages with trade. What does it all mean? President Bill Clinton for one felt it necessary to respond to the street and said it is important for the WTO to show how global trade can improve people's lives. Nowhere is this more true than in developing countries which were given a raw deal in theUruguay Round and even before that is remedied are being hustled into a new round of trade talks.
To look at American grouses first, some say more job losses in developed countries are caused by technology than by global trade and both kinds of losses are more than made up by new job opportunities. What is striking about the discontent in America is that it is being manifested at a time when the US economy has been enjoying an unprecedented period of sustained growth so much so that it has given rise to the notion of a ``new economy'', of growth without the peaks and troughs of the business cycle.
Evidently these changes have not been meaningful for some sections of society which are being left behind. But their sense of injury comes nowhere near what consumers, workers and producers in developing countries feel after the first round of trade agreements failed to meet the promise of opening up opportunities. Even as developing country tariff barriers have fallen, all sorts of barriers, some illegal, havebeen raised in advanced countries to keep out imports from poorer countries. The US has as many as 300 anti-dumping regulations in force which have the effect, WTO rules or no WTO rules, of blocking or raising the cost of goods from developing countries.
The Seattle protests will have served an important purpose if they focus the minds of trade negotiators on one essential fact: the outcome must satisfy people and not just statisticians in trade ministries. Globalisation will encounter much more opposition in developing countries than anything the US has seen if more benefits do not begin to be visible from the opening up of trade in goods and services. Already the sense of injustice is sharpening in India and other countries over the one-sidedness of the WTO agenda and the pressures being mounted to further it. Seattle could deal a serious blow to global trade if basic demands are not conceded such as the lowering of advanced countries' tariff and non-tariff barriers on textiles, footwear and agriculturalproduce.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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