Three Days in December: Resistance within the Ministerial “Seattle” had entered the annals of history before the tear gas faded from the skies over Capitol Hill. Yet, on the morning of December 1, as the national news programs were showing scenes of mayhem from the previous night, delegates arrived for the ministerial ensconced within a city effectively under martial law. Curfew had been imposed, the main streets were patrolled by phalanxes of National Guardsmen, and activists that marched toward the central business district (CBD) in an attempt to repeat the successes of the previous day were arrested en masse. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky opened the ministerial by “expressing her regrets to Ministers . . . who were harassed
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Over the course of the 3 days after N30, the Quad’s command of the WTO agenda was shattered by a concatenation of substantive policy disagreements, overzealous bullying by the USTR, and principled leadership by African delegates. The policy differences centered on two sets of issues. Agriculture, long a major point of contention in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and WTO, was especially problematic. The United States and Europe have long subsidized their agricultural sectors to the detriment of developing economies (IATP, 2003). Their subsidies and below-cost agricultural exports (“dumping”) reduce the potential for agricultural exports from developing countries. Moreover, they deflate prices in developing economies, thereby undermining rural livelihoods. As Bhagirath Lal Das, the former Indian ambassador to the GATT, explains: [A] fraud has been perpetrated on developing countries in terms of liberalization of trade [in agriculture] and improving market access to their exports. …show more content…
A crucial meeting on the TRIPs agreement excluded ministers from African countries that had called for an end to the patenting of life forms.16 Immediately after the ministerial, economist Martin Khor argued that the fundamental causes of the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial lie in “the nontransparent and undemocratic nature of the WTO system, the blatant manipulation of that system by the major powers, and the refusal of many developing countries to continue to be on the receiving end” (Khor, 1999). Based on interviews with delegates from many developing countries, he offers this firsthand account of the collapse: USTR Barshefsky “announced on the second day her “right” as [ministerial chairperson] to use procedures of her own choosing to get a Declaration out of the meeting.” She and the WTO Director General then initiated “green room” meetings to which only between 10 and 20 countries—“the major powers plus a few selected developing countries”—were invited to
Over the course of the 3 days after N30, the Quad’s command of the WTO agenda was shattered by a concatenation of substantive policy disagreements, overzealous bullying by the USTR, and principled leadership by African delegates. The policy differences centered on two sets of issues. Agriculture, long a major point of contention in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and WTO, was especially problematic. The United States and Europe have long subsidized their agricultural sectors to the detriment of developing economies (IATP, 2003). Their subsidies and below-cost agricultural exports (“dumping”) reduce the potential for agricultural exports from developing countries. Moreover, they deflate prices in developing economies, thereby undermining rural livelihoods. As Bhagirath Lal Das, the former Indian ambassador to the GATT, explains: [A] fraud has been perpetrated on developing countries in terms of liberalization of trade [in agriculture] and improving market access to their exports. …show more content…
A crucial meeting on the TRIPs agreement excluded ministers from African countries that had called for an end to the patenting of life forms.16 Immediately after the ministerial, economist Martin Khor argued that the fundamental causes of the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial lie in “the nontransparent and undemocratic nature of the WTO system, the blatant manipulation of that system by the major powers, and the refusal of many developing countries to continue to be on the receiving end” (Khor, 1999). Based on interviews with delegates from many developing countries, he offers this firsthand account of the collapse: USTR Barshefsky “announced on the second day her “right” as [ministerial chairperson] to use procedures of her own choosing to get a Declaration out of the meeting.” She and the WTO Director General then initiated “green room” meetings to which only between 10 and 20 countries—“the major powers plus a few selected developing countries”—were invited to