Fading Shouts.

With unity eroding, anti-globalization movement appears to have peaked

THE anti-globalization movement that came to flower in the Seattle demonstrations of December 1999 may be starting to wilt.

On television, the movement looks alive and well. At last month's summit of Western Hemisphere leaders in Quebec City, some 20,000 people demonstrated against free trade. Last weekend, several hundred picketed the International Monetary Fund.

In reality, the picture is more blurred. The demonstrators have prompted marginal changes at best over the past year or so. They've lost the cohesiveness they had in Seattle. Their impact in Quebec City was negligible.

"Seattle was the high-water mark of the anti-globalization movement," said Marshall Wittmann, a political analyst at the Republican-leaning Hudson Institute. "Since then, it's been relegated largely to the fringe."

The movement has had some successes. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have accelerated their debt-relief programs for the poorest countries and begun talking more with private advocacy groups, such as Oxfam International.

The Seattle demonstrations also jolted politicians in the major industrial nations, albeit briefly. The World Trade Organization slated its 2001 meeting for Qatar, a country that is not likely to admit many demonstrators of any stripe.

Effects of protests

How much can be traced to the protests is arguable. The IMF and World Bank had been heading toward such revisions anyway, after criticism of their handling of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. The WTO's meeting in Qatar won't change its policies any.

Moreover, the unity of the Seattle demonstrators has been seriously eroded. Some old-line advocacy groups have quietly distanced themselves from the anarchists who provided much of the muscle in earlier days. Their agenda is more fragmented now, too.

Perhaps most telling, the anti-globalization forces are beginning to run into resistance from those they say they're trying most to help -- developing countries, supposedly the victims of inadequate global labor and environmental standards.

In Quebec City, for example, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso rejected any move to include environmental and labor standards in trade accords, saying it would make Brazil less competitive and less attractive to foreign investors.

Perhaps as a result, the impact of the demonstrations has been diminishing. The protestors failed to shut down an IMF meeting in Prague last September, and the picketing in Quebec City did little besides provide footage for the TV cameras.

The lack of any serious impact by the demonstrators is particularly evident in the United States, which -- as the primary mover behind globalization and trade-liberalization -- ought to be their major target, Wittmann said.

The main reason the demonstrators have been able to get as far as they have is that the United States and its allies have had nothing to counter them, analysts say. There's no real consensus on any plan to relax trade rules further.

That doesn't mean that the anti-globalization movement is dead. Sylvia Ostry, a former Canadian trade official who has been keeping tabs on protest groups, said they're still very well organized and constantly in touch -- via the Internet.

At the same time, "it isn't clear what's likely to come," Ostry said. "These groups are united by their agreement that the villains are the big, multi-national corporations, but they're not yet agreed on what changes are needed."

"These groups can still come back and rally huge crowds whenever they think it's in their interest," said Geza Feketekuty, a former U.S. trade official. "It's not going to be over until the mainstream groups get more concessions."

Moreover, if President George W. Bush has his way, the negotiations undertaken at last month's Quebec City summit will lead to a new Free Trade Agreement of the Americas that in turn will pave the way for a new round of global trade talks.

Trade talks

Bush's trade negotiator, Robert Zoellick, already is mapping plans to push through legislation designed to pave the way for new trade-liberalization talks. Analysts say the administration has a better-than-even chance of winning it.

Two other factors that are likely to haunt the protestors are the global economic slowdown and the mounting energy shortages in the United States, said Harald B. Malmgren, a Washington economic and trade consultant.

"When times are good, people tend to be more sympathetic to outside problems," Malmgren said. "In the next few years, though, they're going to be less concerned about environmental policies and a lot more worried about home heating-oil costs."

How much impact the anti-globalization movement will continue to have may well become more clear later this year, when the protestors try to disrupt the G-7 summit in Genoa, Italy, the WTO meeting in Qatar and the IMF's annual meeting in Washington.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has its work cut out for it. "We don't have a consensus to go forward with a new round of trade negotiations, but we don't have a consensus against it," Malmgren said.

That's about where things stand.

Art Pine is a columnist for Bloomberg News.