KPLU Local News
(2009-11-23)
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Seattle's host committee had no idea what they were getting us into with their successful bid for the conference. They argued the WTO should come here because of its symbolic importance as a facilitator of trade. The presence of big international players such as Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser has put us among the most trade-dependent regions in the country. One oft-heard mantra is that between a half and a third of all jobs in Washington state depend directly or indirectly on international commerce.
Then-Mayor Paul Schell idealistically hoped the anti-trade demonstrators they heard were coming would just hold banners and signs - and wouldn't try to actually stop anything from happening inside the conference. Little did they know that the opposition to the WTO was as varied and international as the subject matter of the meeting. Many of the protestors were led by groups who had specialized in shutting down past trade talks in Europe and elsewhere.
Former KPLU reporter Steve Krueger was holding down the business and labor beat ten years ago. In the course of monitoring the events and issues crossing his desk at the time, he got early word of the impending trade meeting. He had a hunch that the WTO would bring a lot more with it than the average convention. He led a team of KPLU reporters in two weeks of intensive coverage both of the trade talks and the riots they sparked. We invited him back to our studios to help shed light on the WTO then and now. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.
Bellamy:
First let's remind folks what the WTO is. The World Trade Organization is an international body based in Geneva, Switzerland, made up of member states. Its main function is to encourage trade by enforcing trade rules. Those agreements are made by the members. Currently there are 153. But it's pretty controversial, which is why it caused such a ruckus here ten years ago, right Steve?
Steve:
That's right. I think that what came together a decade ago were these intense passions on both sides of this discussion. This is not just trade issues - this really gets to the heart of how society should function: national dependence versus international interdependence. And the passions were very strong - on both sides of this, even before the WTO got to Seattle. Some of the pro-voices included Pat Davis and Ray Waldman, who were the co-chairs of the Seattle Host committee. Davis was big on pointing out how much consumers lives are enriched with the increased choices that trade brings us. Waldman was quoted at the time saying that without the WTO, "you could easily have anarchy, you could have a situation where the big countries beat up on the small countries and of course that's not a healthy kind of world to have." And in fact that is the kind of world we had before the WTO was created. It wasn't just big countries like the United States beating up on a small country like Burundi. It was countries like the U.S. having severe disagreements all the time with major trading partners like Canada. And there would be chaos in these international business relationships that would be bad for whole sectors of society. So, there was a need for something like WTO. But I don't think when Waldman was talking about anarchy he had in mind exactly what did happen here in Seattle, which was pretty close to anarchy for a while.
Bellamy:
That's right. It was a new organization at the time, but boy did it bring protestors out of the woodwork. It was really the birth of the "blue-green coalition" that we still hear about today: labor and environmental activists joining forces. Paula Wissel did a great job covering that as part of the KPLU team - we have an excerpt of archival tape, with the Seattle Labor Chorus singing: "We're saying NO, NO to WTO .will consumers be safe? Will Labor standards delcoine?" And their concerns were just some of a whole range that came out into the streets of Seattle on the occasion of the trade talks here.
Steve:
Yes. If you remember, there were so many different issues that people had signs about, it was almost hard to figure out, what's the core dispute here? Because - this is what I mean - it was like a protest more over what kind of world are we going to have? As opposed to simple matters over trade policies.
Bellamy:
We put a weeklong series about the WTO on our air before the meeting began, then a week of live ten-minute broadcasts with action from each day during the conference. Steve, we all thought you were nuts to propose this when you did. I thought it would be like watching paint dry on a wall...and I was really wrong. How did you know that this was such a big deal - it certainly wasn't obvious to me.
Steve:
I first heard about the WTO during an interview with Pat Davis, who (in addition to being the host committee co-chair) was a Seattle Port Commissioner. I was talking to her about some shipping line coming to town or something. And she mentioned that this was coming up. It had been approved, it was coming to Seattle. I kind of had a hunch early on that it was not going to be just a trade disputes conference. I had a conversation with some people in the police department and I came away realizing KPLU probably knew more about what was going to happen than the Seattle Police Department did, because we'd done better research. And it was pretty appalling and it was kind of frightening. Because I had a hunch we were going to be looking at chaos. And certainly we did during that week.
Bellamy:
How important is the WTO today?
Steve:
The WTO is not "trade God." It doesn't actually have in itself automatically a lot of power. It cannot tell a country, "thou shalt not do this." What it tells a country is "if you don't follow the rules you've agreed to, we will impose these punishments and sanctions against you." So the WTO still has this role. It's still enforcing rules. It's still trying to make trade work, for better or for worse, depending on your point of view. But it also has completely lost any momentum - one publication recently said they're moving at a glacial pace and I thought that's insulting to glaciers. But they are doing their administrative role. And they're important for that because they are trying to keep things fair when one country or another tries to cheat.
Bellamy:
What's happened to the member states in developing countries? 18 mostly smaller countries have joined in the ten years since the Seattle round -- they wanted to get in. Has the WTO made good on the promise that these developing countries thought it would have for them? Has it brought them more prosperity or created new markets for their international goods?
Steve:
That's good subject matter for a doctoral dissertation. You'd have to go through each individual country, because I suspect the reality for Guinea would not be the reality for Venezuela. If you look through the WTO website, it's really quite impressive, the number of cases they get involved with in different parts of the world.
Overall, I think the reality is the WTO has not been as important over the last ten years as have been other global events such as the 9-11 terror attacks or the economic collapse of a year ago.
Bellamy:
Did the protests matter in the end?
Yes. Some of the things that were not covered during the WTO here, because of the unrest and because of the need to shorten some of the sessions, have come back to bite us I think. There was a session that was scheduled on international financial services reform. They wanted to establish a set of rules that would be the same for the United States as it would for every other country. And the United States wanted to call the tune. That discussion never happened. That whole session was canceled. And many countries are delighted now that it was. When the economic collapse occurred in the United States a year ago, banks in other countries didn't fail. Canada, which has a much stronger regulatory system for its banks didn't lose a single bank. A lot of countries didn't. And they looked at the United States and are saying "phew! If we'd followed their rule, we'd be messed up too."
Steve Krueger covered the business and labor beat for most of his 14-year tenure at KPLU. Bellamy Pailthorp took it over in 2001.
Return to the WTO page here.
For more information:
"What is the WTO?" (from the organizations official site)
"5 years that Shook the World" (from Seattle Metropolitan magazine) © Copyright 2012, KPLU
