Making Sense of Seattle:
What's Wrong with the World Trade Organization

By Dr. R.V. Rasmussen
TransAlta Professor of Environmental Policy
Faculty of Business, University of Alberta
Published in Folio, University of Alberta, December, 1999

As we uncomfortably observe the events in Seattle, particularly the steel-helmeted, mace-wielding police confronting what look to be thousands of mostly youthful, non-violent protestors, we must all be asking, "What has gone wrong?"

Academic trade economists have argued convincingly that trade deals create better standards of living here, and have the potential of creating higher standards throughout the world. While I buy their arguments, the Seattle conflict leaves me with little doubt that the trade-negotiation process is deeply flawed and that there is a greater meaning taking shape beneath the façade of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The scene in Seattle reminds me of the free speech/anti-war movement in Berkeley, Calif., in the late 1960s. I remember the Berkeley president addressing similar masses surrounded by similarly ominous-looking police. He told us that we must disband, that the focus at Berkeley was on academic learning and that political protest rallies must take place off-campus. The irony was we young men had all recently been forced to register for the draft and on graduation would be further forced to participate in what we believed was an immoral (and deadly) war. Another irony: it seemed to me that the American constitution guaranteed the right to peaceful assembly.

A second similarity is the rhetoric of dismissal. In Berkeley, it was suggested the free speech movement was the spawn of the radical left, the massed participants were unknowing dupes and the war in Vietnam was legitimate (remember the Domino Theory?). Yes, the demonstrations were organized by the radical left. But, the draft card in my pocket, my sense of the meaning of the U.S. constitution, and an understanding of how the First World War squandered the youth of a nation told me I was a dupe if I didn’t take the opportunity to engage in peaceful protest.

Consider the similar dismissals by: Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, "These anti-WTO protesters—who are a Noah’s ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix;" the Globe & Mail's Paul Sullivan, "Who are these people? … Well, they are anarchists and environmentalists, unionists and peasants, AIDS activists and farmers against genetically modified foods … they come from everywhere … to join a ‘festival of resistance’…."

Berkeley’s president was certain rationality would win the day, that his view of order (in this case, that political activity should not be conducted on a university campus) would prevail because the greater non-radical majority would listen to his arguments and go home. He continued to make his failed argument in the media even when people were being beaten, tear gassed and arrested en masse on the steps of the administration building. He continued to oppose free speech on campus even when the Berkeley academic senate voted in the ration of seven to one in favor of allowing it. At that point, the president lost credibility.

Today, we have his incarnation in Thomas D’Aquino speaking for 150 Canadian corporations as president of the Business Council on National Issues: "What businesses should be doing is pointing out to the anti-trade demonstrators that they personally benefit from trade … Many of them started their day with a Starbucks coffee made with imported beans, ate lunch at a McDonald’s, a successful trans-national corporation, and wore Nike running shoes [made overseas]. … They are talking about the evils of trade. The hypocrisy factor is stunning."

D’Aquino’s remarks hit home. Yes, I too drink coffee made from imported beans. But, because I do does that mean that I have to accept both the trade deals and the trade-negotiation process?

In previous decades we were content to let the WTO negotiators and lawyers set minor tariff rules in closed-door sessions. In this decade there are two critical differences.

First, these same trade negotiators are perceived to be making deals that will have binding impacts on our resources, our national sovereignty and our environmental and labor standards. Second, Transnational Corporations (TNCs), which now have more power than many nation-states (50 of the world’s 100 largest economic units are TNCs), are perceived to be dominating the trade agenda and process. Indeed, the lobby groups in attendance read like a who’s-who of the corporate West: the Business Council on National Issues, the Washington Council on International Trade, the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters of Canada, the U.S. Alliance for Trade Expansion, the American Electronics Association, the Emergency Committee for American Trade, the list goes on. Here we might ask the Globe and Mail’s question of them: "Who are these people?"

More important, where are other interests—the environmental, labor and other non-government lobbyists--the countervailing powers that are supposed to make democracy tick? Do they share equal access to the negotiators, to government leaders, to setting the agenda, to the systems of information dissemination, to research on the trade process? Their actions in Seattle indicate the answer to these questions is "No." For the most part, the other interests are in the streets.

The rhetoric of TNC representatives suggests that they do not intend to change their present domination of the trade process, but instead will step up their attempts to justify it. For example, Terry Laggner Brown, communications director for the pro-trade Washington Council on International Trade, stated: "We're leaving today to the protesters. … in the longer term, the pro-trade forces will prevail." And, Ms. Drohan of the Globe makes a disturbing call to arms: "The Seattle demonstrations might turn out to be a good thing in the end, especially if they are incredibly disruptive. Business has been asleep to the danger posed by the anti-trade movement. Seattle is the wake up call."

If they continue to follow this route, I think we will see a lose/lose outcome similar to what occurred in Berkeley. There, we saw some students shot and many jailed. We saw boatloads of wounded and mentally damaged soldiers return home from what had become a war of shame. And then there was that most important loss—we witnessed a suspension in the belief that western democratic processes are capable of rendering social justice.

Reinventing the trade process requires an understanding that, despite the good that trade regulation is bringing, the malaise about the power of TNCs to dominate in a new world order is increasing. Drohan suggested Seattle is "a wake-up call." Yes, it is, to those of us who believe in democratic pluralism and who don’t really believe that "Toys R US."

Just as the academic senate at Berkeley took action for free speech on campus, today’s academics, in particular, have a responsibility to examine trade in the wider contexts of environment, social justice, labor standards, income gaps, resource rights and national sovereignty. We are the only participants who enjoy a high credibility in the eyes of the public. However, to continue to argue the benefits of trade in purely economic terms, as many academic economists are doing, is to admit the agenda has been set by the corporate interests and ultimately to lose credibility.

As for the demonstrators in Seattle, of course a small group orchestrated the demonstrations and wanted to provoke a police reaction. It is arguably their only path to power and it is not undemocratic, as some have claimed, to take to the streets. As in Berkeley, the surprising fact is so many "others" showed up. I prefer not to think of those others as "dupes" or as "misinformed." I appreciate their well-meaning efforts on behalf of that part of me worried about a new world order dominated by TNCs.

I would hope the Seattle demonstrations serve to spark the reorganization of the WTO, an organization described by EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy as "medieval." In my view, it is time for our government to bring the trade issues and negotiation process home to the people of Canada via a national forum on the issues.