-Caveat Lector-
Invisible government
Cincinnati protesters shine spotlight on influential
CEO group.
By Daniel Zoll
IT'S GETTING SO you can't even organize a meeting of global
power brokers anymore without calling in the National
Guard. A
year after historic protests derailed the World Trade
Organization talks in Seattle, followed by actions in
Washington,
D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Prague, demonstrators
descended on Cincinnati Nov. 16 to expose an obscure but
influential CEO group called the TransAtlantic Business
Dialogue.
Fifty-three activists were arrested at the Cincinnati
protests,
during three days of mostly peaceful rallies, teach-ins,
and
marches that attracted more than 1,000 people. Why target
the
TABD? In the words of one of its boosters, deputy treasury
secretary Stuart Eizenstat, "The TABD has become deeply
enmeshed and embedded into the U.S. government
decision-making process on a whole range of regulatory,
trade,
and commercial issues. The TABD has had a truly remarkable
impact in our country."
The trouble, critics say, is that the group's "remarkable
impact"
comes at the expense of health, environmental, and consumer
protection, not to mention the democratic process.
About 130 corporate chieftains from Europe and the United
States, representing multinationals such as America Online,
Bayer, and United Technologies, gathered in Cincinnati's
Omni
Netherland Hotel for the three-day meeting. Topping the
list of
the TABD's Cincinnati recommendations is a policy it calls
"approved once, accepted everywhere." In other words, the
TABD wants uniform procedures for product approvals. This
process, which it refers to as "harmonization," sounds
harmless
enough, but the details are troubling. When countries have
conflicting regulations and standards, critics say, the
TABD
typically lobbies to push the more stringent standards
downward.
"Their so-called harmonization goal is to gut the best laws
in
Europe and the U.S. and replace them with the worst laws in
Europe and the U.S.," said Ed Mierzwinski of the U.S.
Public
Interest Research Group. "Whether it's privacy-in-banking
laws
or tire-safety standards or food-safety standards, their
goal is
to harmonize at the floor rather than at the ceiling of
existing
laws. And that's a serious problem."
According to the TABD's 2000 Mid-Year Report, the group is
seeking uniformity in dozens of areas, including drugs,
medical
devices, auto safety, aviation safety, biotechnology and
genetically modified foods, cosmetics, cellular phones,
dietary
supplements, and chemicals.
Mary Bottari of Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen's
Global
Trade Watch says the TABD's goals are nicely summed up in
one sentence in TABD's midyear report: "The new obstacles
to
trade are now domestic regulations."
These domestic regulations, Bottari says, are "exactly the
consumer protections, the environmental protections, and
the
animal-welfare protections that we've all been fighting for
for
years. Those are the 'barriers to trade' that TABD wants to
take
out."
One way the TABD is targeting domestic regulations is by
aggressively pushing a new round of WTO trade talks and an
expansion of the trade organization's already sweeping
authority.
The TABD has even figured out how to fend off regulations
before they see the light of day. The group has convinced
the
United States and the European Union to adopt what it calls
an
"early warning" system, which alerts corporations to
regulations
that may be "barriers to trade." Domestic regulations on
the
TABD early-warning hit list include a European computer
waste
recycling law, another E.U. measure regulating animal
testing of
cosmetics, an Italian ban on genetically modified
organisms, and
U.S. cell-phone radiation standards.
TABD deputy director Jeffrey Werner denies that his group
favors the lowest common denominator when it comes to
consumer and environmental protections. "We just encourage
wherever possible to work internationally and
supranationally to
try to avoid the complications you have in a globalized
world,"
he said. "People who are involved in business know that the
minute you start alienating consumers is the minute you go
out
of business."
Werner downplayed the influence of the TABD, saying that it
is
just one of four forums created by the United States and
the
European Union to coordinate transatlantic issues. The
other
three "dialogues" – dealing with consumer, environment, and
small-business issues – all have the same level of access
to
policy makers, he said.
But USPIRG's Mierzwinski, also a member of the
TransAtlantic
Consumer Dialogue, says it is absurd for the TABD to equate
its
influence with that of the other TransAtlantic groups. For
one
thing, while luminaries such as U.S. vice president Al Gore
and
E.U. trade commissioner Pascal Lamy regularly attend TABD
conferences, the governments send midlevel bureaucrats to
address the consumer group. The most glaring evidence of
disparity, however, is that the Clinton administration has
essentially adopted the TABD's agenda of liberalization,
privatization, and deregulation as its own trade policy.
None of
the other groups can say that.
Gore confirmed as much when addressing the TABD in
November 1998. "I know that you are proud of the fact that
of
the 129 recommendations TABD has made in the past three
years, over 50 percent have been implemented into law," he
said.
The vice president wasn't exaggerating. The TABD is so
confident in its position that it even sets deadlines for
government compliance. For example, on the subject of
outstanding WTO disputes between the United States and the
European Union, the TABD urges the governments to come to a
solution "no later than the TABD conference in Cincinnati."
This
could be dismissed as mere grandstanding if the governments
didn't often meet such deadlines.
Below the radar
The TABD is more effective, and insidious, than other
corporate
trade groups, critics say, because it was actually
initiated by
corporate allies within government. It was launched in 1995
at
the suggestion of then-U.S. commerce secretary Ron Brown
and E.U. trade commissioner Leon Brittan as a way to speed
up
transatlantic trade liberalization.
Part of the TABD's strategy seems to be to operate below
the
radar. The elusive group has no permanent office;
operations
are headquartered at a different corporation each year. In
fact,
officials say, it is not really an organization at all but
an "informal
process."
Here's how the process works: The dialogue consists of more
than 40 issue groups covering different sectors, such as
medical
devices and telecommunication services, and topics, such as
customs regulations, climate change, and intellectual
property.
Each issue group, led by two business executives, one from
the
United States and one from the European Union, makes joint
trade recommendations and tracks their implementation. The
TABD officially presents its demands or "deliverables" to
government officials at E.U.-U.S. summits, held twice a
year.
The TABD quietly pursues its agenda in several ways. One of
these is shaping free-trade treaties and aggressively
pushing
the expansion of the WTO. Another, lower-profile tactic is
to
promote "mutual recognition agreements." Under these
reciprocal deals, one nation agrees to recognize another
nation's safety inspection and approval system in sectors
such
as medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and
telecommunications.
Critics say this is a backdoor way to relax standards: for
example, the fine print of the agreement on medical
devices,
which has not yet been fully implemented, calls for farming
out
quality inspections to private third parties hired by the
manufacturers, rather than federal regulators.
The TABD also is out to bar governments from applying a
principle that serves as the basis for many public-health
and
environmental regulations, particularly in Europe. Known as
the
"precautionary principle," it holds that when an activity
or
substance raises potential threats to human health or the
environment, government should step in and regulate. When
there is scientific uncertainty, the industry – not the
public –
should bear the burden of proof. In other words, better
safe
than sorry.
That's the approach many European countries are taking on
the
genetically modified food issue, which is why TABD members
and biotech giants such as Monsanto and Unilever are so
keen
on killing the precautionary principle. Monsanto and its
allies
favor foisting unproved technologies on the public, arguing
that
regulations should wait until they can be based on "sound
science." In a related case, the TABD is trying to stifle
an E.U.
proposal, based on the precautionary principle, to regulate
pharmaceuticals containing beef-derived ingredients that
could
carry traces of mad cow disease.
On behalf of its members in the electronics industry, the
TABD
is trying to eliminate a new E.U. initiative aimed at
reducing
computer trash. The increase in the use of PCs and other
high-tech equipment in recent years has created a huge
increase in hazardous waste. Electronic trash contains many
dangerous substances, such as lead, mercury, and cadmium.
To
address this, the European Union drafted the Directive on
Computer Waste, a law that would require electronic
equipment
manufacturers to replace those toxic heavy metals with less
harmful substances by 2008. The directive also would
require
manufacturers to begin retrieving and recycling old
electronic
equipment by 2006. The TABD and its high-tech industry
members have mobilized to kill the proposal and have
already
succeeded in watering it down significantly.
Also on the TABD's early-warning list is the European
Union's
decision to speed up the phaseout of ozone-depleting
hydrochlorofluorocarbons, which contribute to global
warming.
The United States is supporting the TABD's attempts to
stifle
the European Union's efforts, which it calls a "trade
barrier."
Though many of the environmental and consumer laws under
attack are European, hundreds of U.S. laws are also in
danger
of being softened. For example, the TABD considers the
entire
U.S. product-liability system to be a "serious impediment"
to
global trade.
Sister Alice Gerdeman of the Cincinnati-based Coalition for
a
Humane Economy says it is this blurring of the lines
between
corporations and government that motivated her group to
organize teach-ins, rallies, and demonstrations at the TABD
CEO conference last week.
"We are very concerned about limiting the power to make
decisions about the economy to a very small group of
people,
people who have a lot of economic clout," Gerdeman said.
"We
don't have a problem with them having a voice; we just
don't
think their voice should be more powerful than any other
group."
E-mail Daniel Zoll at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Read Corporate conspiracy, a Focus on the Corporation
column
on the TABD meeting. 11.21.00
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