The New York Times

Monday, December 6, 1999

The Collapse in Seattle

Many trade experts warned that a new round of global trade talks was premature. The world, they said, needed more time to absorb the trade-opening measures that were adopted five years ago. A week of protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and, more important, the embarrassing refusal of the W.T.O. to endorse President Clinton's trade-liberalization program proved that the warnings were prescient. But the failed talks augur no general calamity.

Trade will continue to be governed by rules that have served the trading community well for over 50 years. Globalization proved an easy target for an alliance of convenience between well-intentioned and more malicious protesters, yet the need for it to continue as the main vehicle of international economic progress still stands.

But to say that the march toward open trade will continue does not argue for minimizing the damage of last week's events. The failure in Seattle will keep needless barriers in place at least a few years longer. Also lost was the chance to make reforms that would have addressed critics, prevented future backlashes like the "battle in Seattle" and built confidence in the W.T.O.

Perhaps the most important of the three main reforms pushed by Mr. Clinton was a call to have the W.T.O. open up its judicial panels to public scrutiny and, where feasible, to wider participation. The organization's secretive ways breed distrust and conspiracy fears among governments and advocacy groups.

On the important issue of labor rights, President Clinton pushed the W.T.O. to create a discussion group to look at sweatshop conditions and child labor. But he encouraged a two-edged revolt when he told an interviewer he envisioned eventual sanctions on countries that violate basic rights. On the policy level, his excessive candor left ministers from third-world countries fearing that the proposal would be used to prevent them from exporting their way out of poverty. On a grittier level, they suspected that the American president, who must lead on a global basis, was catering to American unions and the domestic election needs of his vice president. The goal of fair work conditions, however, need not die. The administration can urge other groups, like the International Labor Organization, to pursue the issue with or without the W.T.O.'s participation.

Nor need the collapse of trade talks halt progress on environmental issues. The W.T.O.'s charter embraces, in theory, the need to protect the environment. The Seattle protesters gave notice to the organization to strike a more sensitive balance between trade and environment in its rule-making.

It is unclear, to say the least, if Mr. Clinton has time to reclaim a leadership role on trade.

Yet the underdeveloped nations that refused to endorse his recommendations in a final communiqu will lose the most from closed agricultural markets, anti-dumping laws and prohibitive pharmaceutical prices -- all problems that can only be addressed in talks like the round blocked in Seattle.

The World Trade Organization is not the Hydra-headed monster portrayed by its severest critics. But after Seattle, it is all the more important for this administration or its successor to help enhance the W.T.O.'s legitimacy through reforms on secrecy, labor rights and the environment. That is what the demonstrators demanded. That is what people around the globe deserve.