Media Myths & World Trade.

The demonstrations late last year in Seattle, Washington, against the World Trade Organization already have had at least one positive effect: they have forced complacent mainstream media to acknowledge that opposition to corporate trade agendas is worldwide and broadly based. Unfortunately, however, the same corporate journalists who were surprised by the vehement protests persist in disseminating a very one-sided portrait of the political conflict. Five of the most prevalent media myths deserve closer examination.

Myth #1: President Clinton and the WT0 want to liberalize trade among nations, thereby facilitating economic development that will help everyone.

This line is at best a partial truth. The WTO and the Clinton administration have pushed for some tariff reductions that would expand trade. Nonetheless, WTO rules also force "developing" societies to accept patent and copyright protections that in effect tax and thereby limit many existing forms of trade.

China, for instance, has a booming trade in "pirated" software. New copyright protections would force the Chinese government to place a heavy tax on these transactions, thereby slowing trade and the dissemination of these technologies. Owners of software firms--mostly U.S. based--would benefit, but China would hardly gain from this aspect of trade regulation. WTO regulations regarding patents are equally problematic. They allow foreign corporations to patent genetic codes, thereby making it impossible for many developing-world nations to continue domestic sales of both traditional seed crops and medicinal remedies without paying prohibitive royalties to multinational firms.

Myth #2: The forces opposed to trade liberalization are protectionist. They are a throwback to the isolationists of the interwar period. They seek to repeal many of the most progressive currents of the twentieth century.

Contrary to this widespread media stereotype, what most stands out about the Seattle marches against the WTO is the exceptionally ecumenical and progressive nature of the protest. Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer and a participant in several of the Seattle symposia, nicely captured this flavor in a recent essay:

   The president of the Longshore and Warehouse Union proudly announced that
   his people had shut down West Coast ports from Seattle down to San Pedro,
   and recalled his union's history of support for Salvadoran workers and the
   Liverpool dockers.... Jay Mazur, president of the ... clothing and textile
   workers union UNITE!, declaimed that "we are one," environmentalists and
   workers around the world. While U.S. labor has never been known for making
   common cause with outside groups, the (admittedly mild) Sierra Club
   president Carl Pope made an appearance, as did the head of the Citizens
   Trade Watch, Lori Wallach.

Myth #3: Opponents of the WT0 fail to recognize that it is not world government. It merely regulates trade.

Such talk flies in the face of repeated WTO interventions that, far from being limited to trade, would undermine the quality of the food we eat and the air we breathe. In any case, many Seattle protesters do not object to expanded international authority if that authority is broadly democratic. If anything, they recognize one of the great lessons of the twentieth century: when corporate markets are completely unregulated, workplace and environmental standards gravitate to the lowest common denominator.

The WTO, by treating the advanced environmental standards of many modern nations as "restraints on trade," has in effect left many progressive nations with two choices: either they must repeal the regulations or face onerous economic sanctions in the form of high tariff walls on their principal export products. The recent comment by WTO Director-General Michael Moore that his organization hardly amounts to world government is utterly disingenuous. National governments are about as free to disregard the findings of the WTO's secret and unrepresentative panels as pedestrians are free to walk away from gun-toting muggers.

Myth #4: The Clinton administration would like to get the WTO to embrace broad labor and environmental standards as part of its trade agreements, but developing nations would object.

Of all the conventional wisdom, this deserves the most careful scrutiny. In the first place, many developing nations have strenuously objected to the copyright and patent provisions in the new trade laws. They have grudgingly accepted the package only because the United States has insisted on their doing so as a condition for access to its enormous market and for loans from international lending agencies. The Clinton administration has at every stage refused to give the same priority to labor that it gives to the corporate owners of "intellectual property." An adequate world trade deal would start with debt relief for poorer nations and guarantee those societies more equitable access to intellectual property. On this foundation, it could more equitably insist on more stringent labor and environmental standards.

But an equally significant question is what one means by "labor standards" and just which forces within the developing world would oppose them. Many of the developing nations--China is an outstanding example--have autocratic governments that hardly acknowledge, let alone represent, dissident currents within their own society. And labor standards, properly defined and applied, would not be a one-way street. Some trade activists, both in the United States and elsewhere, have advocated that future trade treaties include minimum wage standards pegged to each nation's general level of productivity and development. While such standards would force higher wages in Mexico, for example, they would also mandate much higher minimum wages and fair conditions for labor organizing in the United States.

With a floor pegged to each nation's level of productivity, wages standards would not precipitate job flight by corporations in search of low-wage havens. Economic development would then be driven not by high profit margins and the luxury consumption of the wealthy but by higher worker wages and greater consumer demand worldwide. Exactly how such standards would be defined and enforced is a difficult question, but it deserves as much attention as the protection of corporate patents and copyrights.

Myth #5: The expanded trade of the post-World War II period is the primary factor underlying worldwide growth.

There is a consensus among economists that trade in goods and services can in principle benefit everyone. There is, however, a growing recognition, even among some mainstream economists, that the new patterns of globalization have helped foster growing economic inequality both within and among nations. Furthermore, much of the most dramatic post-World War II growth, such as in the European Union and in Southeast Asia, has been based on trade but hardly followed the WTO model. In Europe, wages and labor standards were maintained, and Southeast Asian nations protected key industries for long periods of time.

Earlier in this century, our nation learned a valuable lesson as our internal commerce became national in scope. With unregulated corporate markets, corporate leaders can pursue low-wage havens. Worker wages are debased and often fail to keep pace with gains in productivity and profits. Eventually the consumer purchasing power needed to sustain economic growth begins to wane.

If our current modes of international trade force us to strip away all national safety nets and regulations regarding wages and financial and currency speculation, we will be left with only a blind leap of faith that international markets are somehow immune to the failings domestic economies manifested earlier in this century. If that leap of faith is misguided, the world may then plunge into ugly forms of nationalism and protectionism as each nation strives desperately to shore up its shrinking markets.

It would be far preferable for national leaders to begin working now with the more progressive forces represented in Seattle. Their task is to construct at the international level equivalents to the regulatory and labor initiatives enacted by the United States and western European governments in the post-World War II era.

John Buell is a freelance writer living in Southwest Harbor, Maine, who writes regularly on labor and environmental issues, including Democracy by Other Means: The Politics of Work, Leisure, and Environment (University of Illinois Press). His e-mail address is [e-mail].