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| COLLIDING WORLDS | |
 December 6, 1999 
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 MARGARET
WARNER: Joining us first for a Newsmaker interview is the woman who led
the US effort in Seattle, US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky.
Welcome, Madam Ambassador.
CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: My pleasure. Good to be here. MARGARET WARNER: Just a few days before the meeting began, you said... You predicted it will all come together, as you put it, and you said you see at the end everyone knows that failure is not an option. What went wrong? Did you just miscalculate how the other countries felt?
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| Election year negotiations | ||||||||||||||||||||
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CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: No. I think that this is absolutely not the case as demonstrated by the president having called for a round at this point in time, for the president coming to Seattle. The fact that for the last several years and including in particular this year, the President has personally taken on among the greatest challenges with respect to global leadership: The Asian financial crisis, debt relief, China, the call for a new round -- these are massive issues which he is certainly not obligated to undertake but he has and he did with respect to the round as well. This isn't an election issue. It's a question of countries simply not yet able -- yet able -- to come together on a common agenda. MARGARET WARNER: Do you think, in retrospect, the labor issue either shouldn't have been promoted quite so aggressively by the president and the delegation or could it have been handled differently in some way?
In other words, countries subject to blinding poverty see as their first task: growth -- getting people out of poverty. And that is their focus and they tend to be much less inclined to add into the equation the labor and environmental issues. And I think we... I think groups promoting those issues need to be very sensitive and need to understand fully the great concerns of the developing world who fear that they will not emerge, not be allowed to emerge from situations of terribly low income, income inequality and in the case of sub-Saharan Africa grinding poverty. |
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| A democratization of trade | ||||||||||||||||||||
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CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: I think what we're seeing is a democratization of the process of trade. And I think that that is a good thing -- that is to say, notions of transparency in the system, the idea that there are issues that also must be discussed in the context of trade, whether labor or environment, I think these are very important principles, but I also think that the protesters did not speak with one voice. I think, of course, the violence was deplorable and can't be excused on any basis. Peaceful protest, I think, was effective in raising the profile of these issues in a very responsible and careful way, but I do think that for all countries the issue in general of the kind of democratization that has swept the world will also begin to sweep the international institutions. We saw this in the debate on IMF funding; we see this now with respect to WTO. And it will be the challenge for these institutions to respond to cries of increased openness, increased transparency, participation, increased accountability and of course this is part of the agenda that we put forward. MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Very briefly before we go, do you think there's any chance of getting global trade talks started during the last year of the Clinton administration?
MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Madam Ambassador, well, thank you very much. CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: My pleasure. |
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CHARLENE
BARSHEFSKY: I think the countries came to Seattle with the full intent
to negotiate in good faith. I think as the meetings went on, though,
countries became increasingly concerned about taking the political leap
and making the hard, political decisions. For 50 years, for example,
agriculture trade has dogged the international trading system and has
been the single most critical factor in leading to negotiations that
don't fully close. We had similar problem here as well. There were many
other issues on which countries increasingly became uncomfortable either
because they weren't really able to get what they wanted, they thought
they had to compromise too much, or because other countries felt their
requests weren't being responded to adequately. And this happens I think
from time to time. It's happened three or four times in the course of
the Uruguay round. It happened when we first made a try at a global
telecom agreement two years ago, when we first made a try to a global
financial services agreement. We took a time out in each of those instances,
stepped back, similarly on China. From April until now, step back, and
countries over time reposition. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Now the E.U. Trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, said today --
he was back home in Europe -- he suggested it was also President Clinton
who in the end wasn't able to make the concessions necessary. He blamed
the political calendar. And he said, you know, nobody likes to make
concessions in an election campaign. 
CHARLENE
BARSHEFSKY: I think there are two aspects. With respect to our handling
of the issue, we -- Europe, Canada, a number of countries -- made proposals
with respect to labor. We were working quite well together. And indeed
we were in the process of trying to put together a unified draft text
on labor, but there's a second issue, and that is that developing countries,
particularly the lower income and the poorest countries, are terribly
concerned that the developed world will condition trade on issues to
which those countries cannot adequately respond as yet. 
MARGARET
WARNER: What impact do you think all the street protests had and what
does the energy and intensity of those protests tell you about what
you're going to have to do in the future, what the whole sort of global
trade community will have to do in the future? 
CHARLENE
BARSHEFSKY: I think there is always a chance. I called for a time-out
in the talks because I made the judgment that the talks could not possibly
close on a basis with which countries would be comfortable. And, of
course, that in and of itself immediately tells you you'll never have
a productive negotiation even were an agreement signed. Countries, I
think, will take a step back. We will do a number of soundings. The
director-general of the WTO will do likewise. And then we'll proceed
from there.