Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization

Chapter 6: Gleaning the GATT

chapter 6 Gleaning the GATT A   through the Reagan administration’s GATT proposals in the summer of 1987, Mark Ritchie was worried.1 Ritchie was an agricultural policy analyst for the state of Minnesota. His job was to examine how global and domestic public policies might affect Minnesota’s farmers.2 The members of the GATT had begun the eighth round of multilateral trade negotiations (the Uruguay Round) in 1986. U.S. officials had five areas of negotiating priority: agriculture, services, intellectual property rights, investment measures, and GATT dispute settlement. They hoped to strengthen GATT’s rules governing the use of NTBs such as food safety standards. In their opinion, this would ensure that such national regulations would not be covertly used as tools of protection . Finally, U.S. officials wanted to ensure that no nation could adhere to GATT selectively. This phenomenon, called GATT à la carte, meant that nations would adhere to some of the codes negotiated during the Tokyo Round, but not others.3 These officials hoped that such a comprehensive approach to trade liberalization under the Uruguay Round would strengthen the GATT and expand trade. Moreover, they argued that a more global and comprehensive approach to trade liberalization would be in the interests of the small family farmers that Mark Ritchie wanted to support. Ritchie was not opposed to bringing agricultural trade under international rules, but he did not want these rules to result in the demise of small farmers. Nor did he want these rules to limit the ability of national or state level policymakers to use health and safety standards to protect consumers and producers.4 He understood that sometimes national or state level regulations distorted trade among foreign and domestic producers. In his view, trade liberalization should ensure each member nation’s rights to achieve the level of food self-sufficiency and consumer safety the individual nation deemed appropriate. But he feared that should the Reagan administration trade policy plans become reality, the GATT could become a backdoor tool for deregulating consumer, health and safety, and environmental regulations.5 In 1987, Mark Ritchie virtually stood alone in his fear about the potential implications of these GATT proposals.6 Few Americans had heard of the oddly named GATT. Even fewer Americans read the Reagan administration proposals for a new round of multilateral trade negotiations.7 Thus, most people were not cognizant that globalization put their national governments in a dilemma. As the United States and other nations opened themselves to global markets, their citizens demanded new and broader forms of regulation and social insurance to cushion them from the vicissitudes of global markets. But the state (seconded by taxpayers and investors) is less able to play that role without making itself less competitive in global markets. This is the “Catch22 ” of globalization.8 In 1987, Ritchie did not seem to have much ability to influence those negotiations. He was not a “player” in U.S. farm policy during the Reagan/Bush era (1981–1992), nor was he well connected to the movers and shakers who made trade policy in Congress or the Reagan administration.9 But he had experience organizing an international movement. He also was an effective educator and fundraiser, willing to use his considerable energy and public-speaking skills to explain his concerns to other farm, civic, environmental, religious, community, consumer activists, and foundation officials.10 After reading the proposals, Mark Ritchie became a twentiethcentury Paul Revere, warning citizens and civil society groups that the Reagan (and later Bush) administration’s trade policy plans could jeopardize national approaches to sustainable development, food self-sufficiency, and national systems of social regulation. After 1988, Ritchie became more like Johnny Appleseed. He saw his mission as organizing a domestic and international movement critical of trade agreements. He built bridges among development, farm, environmental, human rights, and labor groups and planted the seeds of trade agreement criticism.11 As a result of his efforts (and those of many others), a wide range of individuals in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia formed links to influence the Uruguay Round, and in particular the U.S. trade proposals. Some activists thought the Reagan and Bush administrations were using the GATT as a tool to lower national regulatory standards. They came to that perspective not only because of the content of the trade policy plans, but also because of the context in which the Reagan and Bush administrations made their Gleaning the GATT 143 [3.145.60.166] Project...