By Frank Noakes
Ralph Nader, the world's best-known consumer rights advocate, visited Australia as the guest of the Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations earlier this month. The talented lawyer, who successfully pushed for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Agency and the Freedom of Information Act in the US, represents Public Citizen, a powerful Washington-based consumer action group. While here, Nader highlighted the new General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) as possibly the greatest threat to democracy today.
"GATT is an international form of governance", an outspoken Nader told journalists in the plush Vice-Regal Room at the Randwick Racecourse on October 10. "[GATT] subordinates non-trade living standards, like health and safety, consumer, environmental and workplace to the dictates of international commerce."
In January, a new organisation, the World Trade Organisation, based in Switzerland, will be born under the auspices of the GATT agreement. The WTO has legislative, judicial and executive powers and can impose penalties and other sanctions, through its tribunals, on its 123 member nations.
"One country can take another country's laws to the tribunals in Geneva and if they [the complainants] prevail the losing country — the burden of proof is on the defendant — has to repeal the laws or pay perpetual trade fines and sanctions to the winning country." In fact, the WTO will not require countries to actually repeal offending laws, but the laws will not be able to be implemented without penalty.
"As if that's not bad enough, the tribunals are kangaroo courts: one, they exclude the press from their procedures; two, they exclude all other citizens; three, they exclude all other parties participating in an advisory role — the only parties are the national governments. So if a law in New South Wales or Queensland relating to asbestos, food additives, pesticides, chemicals in the workplace, for example, is seen by these tribunals as restrictive on imports, the premier of NSW or the attorney-general cannot go to Geneva to contest the case before the tribunals."
According to Nader, transcripts of proceedings will not be made public and the alleged breach, the evidence and the submissions will all, in practice, remain secret.
"To top it off, environmental, consumer and workplace safety issues will be decided by a three-person tribunal made up of trade specialists who are allowed to pursue simultaneous business careers."
Little debate
Nader and Public Citizen, set up in the early '70s, recently managed to force a limited debate in the US. "All of the environmental groups are against it [GATT], all the consumer groups except one are against it and all the unions are against it." Nader describes the attitude of most elected representatives as: "If it's got 'free trade' on it, stop thinking! And don't ask what else it has on it."
The draconian agreement almost passed the US congress with President Clinton's support in early October, but with some "divide and rule tactics", the vote was postponed until early December.
In Australia, GATT, as such, does not even go before parliament. Green Left Weekly was informed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that a few amendments will go before the House of Representatives to make already existing WTO-relevant legislation totally consistent. These amendments are trade related and primarily concern tariffs and intellectual property rights — then, Australia is signed, sealed and delivered to the corporations.
"In parliamentary countries and dictatorships there's almost no public debate", confirms Nader. "There are massive rallies in India. There a million farmers protested against the patenting of seeds by the agribusiness companies, whereby farmers will have to pay royalties on their seeds. But largely, once a prime minister sends a trade minister to Geneva and once a dictator sends an emissary to Geneva and they sign the agreement, you're not going to get a battle in parliament."
In the US, opponents of GATT offered a prize to any member of the Congress who had read the agreement and could answer 10 simple questions on it. Only one of the 535 legislators came forward willing to try to answer the questions. "None of them have read it!", Nader declared.
"In order to grease the passage through the US Congress they [the administration] got a special fast track law through, so that this trade agreement is voted up or down with no amendments permitted. So, here's a trade agreement that doesn't stick to trade, that meddles in health, safety and human rights, that subordinates these factors to trade and is going to be voted on in an autocratic way.
"This is the end of linking trade with human rights. Furthermore, the US will not be able to pass a law proposed by Senator Harkin of Iowa banning the import of products from child labour factories abroad. That is considered, under GATT, an illegal process standard, that is, products of like nature cannot be discriminated against based on how they're produced. So [you can have] seven, eight and nine-year-olds in an Indian factory manufacturing carpets headed for Gimbels in New York and you cannot ban that import. Only prison labour products are banned.
Safety
"Here we are, almost in the 21st century and we're joining an international regime that subordinates non-commercial living standards to the dictates of trade. It isn't trade that has to get on its knees before the tribunals of Geneva to prove that it's least consumer damaging in terms of health and safety; it's the reverse."
US food safety requirements are higher than international standards set in Rome but, under the new GATT, Brazil, for example, will be able to ship fruit to the US with DDT and other chemical residues which US standards currently prohibit. Brazil will be able to argue in Geneva that the US standards are restricting trade. Eventually, international standards could be knocked out.
Harmonising of standards "is going to be lowest common denominator". Nader uses the example of truck weight standards to illustrate his point. "The US allows 80,000 pounds maximum, Mexico 175,000 pounds — which way do you think it's going to go? Especially as the trucking industry in the US hates wants to go the Mexican road. It might not go to 175,000 pounds, but it sure ain't going to stay at 80,000."
It was put to Nader that some Third World countries are opposed to international environmental, worker or consumer standards, claiming that they act to their disadvantage in competition with the West. While conceding that the West has suppressed the prices of raw materials in the Third World, Nader, in a typical rapid-fire response, insisted that it is necessary to separate repressive arguments from legitimate ones.
"When you get a country like Mexico that brutalises workers who try to form independent trade unions to raise wages, then you've got a government competing ... based on repression, not on efficiency or innovation."
Now middle-aged, but still impassioned, Nader told Green Left Weekly that GATT will tie the hands of consumer groups. "We can battle with politicians in Albany and Washington because we have some access, some press, we have some judicial rights. How are you going to deal with Geneva's closed tribunals and secret harmonisation committees? That's why it's very anti-democratic."
When Nader testified before Congress, he stated that his first criterion for judging a world trade agreement is: "Does it damage democracy?"
"These trade agreements strengthen the power of multinational corporations and exclude the participation of and reduce the power of citizen groups, environmentalists, consumers and trade unions."
Although hundreds of strategies have been formulated to counter the WTO, Nader says that "our job now is to try to stop it before the Congress approves it".
Clinton has not publicised the GATT agreement and has not held one press conference on the subject, says Nader. "I've challenged Vice-President Al Gore to debate [on TV]; he debated [former presidential candidate] Ross Perot on NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement]. I've challenged high government officials to pick their audiences randomly, anywhere in the country and if I don't win three to one on the debate, I'll concede defeat. They have an impossible authoritarian message to sell, and they don't want to debate.
"We have a very large citizen trade coalition made up of dozens of groups all over the country — trade union, environmental, consumer and farmer groups — that are opposed to GATT. But the business/government axis is extremely powerful — and it will be even more powerful if this gets through", Nader warned.