-Caveat Lector-
WTO: Meltdown
Thank Heaven the Seattle meeting of the World Trade
Organization closed with absolutely nothing accomplished.
Indeed, the delegates are glad just to leave the city in one
piece. As to when and where the next meeting of this
global bureaucracy will take place, no one knows for sure.
We'd all be better off -- indeed the cause of free trade
would be better off -- if it never met again.
What killed the meeting was not the protesters so much as
the man who finally let the regulatory cat out of the
global-government bag: Bill Clinton. In a slip of the tongue,
he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the WTO should
use sanctions to enforce U.S.-style labor regulations around
the world.
"Ultimately, I would favor a system in which sanctions
would come for violating any provision of a trade
agreement," Mr. Clinton said, revealing the exoteric
doctrine his administration has worked so hard to keep
under wraps. So much for the esoteric line that the
administration only supports a labor "working group." The
administration tried to back off the comment later, but
everyone knows that Clinton meant exactly what he said.
Think of the implications of this labor-union dream come
true. The WTO would immediately become the
enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Labor -- or,
worse, the International Labor Organization -- restricting
trade with any country that doesn't subsidize labor unions,
enact minimum-wage laws, mandate employment welfare,
ban "discrimination," and otherwise gum up its labor
market with every manner of intervention.
Third World delegates immediately recognized what Clinton
was up to: He was endorsing all the key demands of the
protesters, who want to see trade "linked" to the expansion
of the global welfare-regulatory state. The delegates had
long thought the U.S. had a secret plan to use the WTO to
enact global-government regulations to cripple their
struggling economies, but now they had proof.
Third World trade officials also recognized that this
regulatory mare's nest would be the kiss of death, not only
for their economies but also for the world in general. New
labor regulations, working together with new environmental
regulations, would consign a good part of the world to
permanent poverty.
"Those people outside are not talking for the developing
world," Pakistani delegate Munir Ahmad said of the
protesters. "They say they want minimum wage for
workers? How could you have a minimum wage of $4 for
workers in Bangladesh? It's not even 20 cents there."
"If you start using trade as a lever to implement non-trade
related issues," Youssef Boutros-Ghali of Egypt said, "that
will be the end of the multilateral trading system -- maybe
not this year, but in 10 to 15 years."
"We will block consensus on every issue if the United
States proposal goes ahead," the Pakistani trade minister
told the Wall Street Journal. "We will explode the meeting."
Go, Pakistan, and the sooner, the better!
Why are union bosses so adamant about enforcing
so-called worker rights around the world, including the
entire socialist agenda spelled out in the charter of the
International Labor Organization? Have John Sweeney and
Jimmy Hoffa decided to set aside their myopic greed for
higher union wages in the antiquated industries they
dominate in order to exercise their deep love for the poor of
the world?
No chance. They intend to cripple developing economies
just as these countries are attracting record levels of
investment. The unions want to protect their cartel from
competition, and plan to use world government to do it.
That's why they hate genuine free trade, and why they
place so much hope in the WTO; they want it to become
their tool, and Clinton is in their back pocket.
No one with a conscience can support the international
imposition of "labor rights." It would mean throwing
millions of people out of work, and entrenching misery in
the poorest parts of the world. Why, moreover, should
Third World peoples have to subject their economies to the
control of the WTO, which is completely dominated by the
large developed nations? They must have the freedom to
compete, and that means stopping the WTO from
wrecking their hopes and dreams for the future.
Interesting, isn't it, that the Seattle protesters can profess
to
be so "socially aware" and "progressive" even as they try to
consign the entire developing world to permanent poverty?
In fact, the demonstrators are nothing but shills for elite
labor interests in this country, who are concerned only
about fattening their wallets at the expense of the
consumers and workers of the world. Workers of the
world unite! -- against U.S. labor unions and the WTO.
It was especially sickening to see Clinton sign the
much-vaunted agreement against child labor. What happens
to children in desperately poor countries if they can't work?
They starve to death, join street gangs, or sell themselves
as prostitutes. With jobs, they have food and clothes and
shoes, and they can help their parents and siblings too.
Jobs bring self-respect, train them in civilized living, and
give them a future. With their jobs -- call it child labor if
you want -- they have hope.
God bless the companies that employ them, and the
Americans, Europeans, and Asians who buy their products.
Curses on the whining social reformers who would ban
lifesaving child labor around the world, and keep its
products from our shores.
In the early stages of the WTO debate, it was common for
conservatives to worry that the WTO's democratic voting
mechanism would permit the U.S. to be outvoted by the
Third World, which represents a majority of delegates. In
retrospect this fear was entirely misplaced. Indeed, we
should cheer Third World delegates, because it is they who
stand between us and a global regulatory regime
administered by the U.S.
Countries in the developing world have the right to retain
their sovereignty too. They have the right to conduct their
affairs without being dictated to by the likes of Sweeney,
Hoffa, and all the rest of the imperialist social planners,
whether they were speaking in the halls of the WTO or
protesting on the streets.
That Pakistani trade official is right: The developing world
should explode what's left of the WTO.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. is president of the Ludwig von
Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He also edits a daily
news site, LewRockwell.com.
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