Asia Times: The Gore menace to the WTO agenda



	November 30, 1999	atimes.com

Editorials

The Gore menace to the WTO agenda

''Critics say the administration of President Clinton is pandering to US labor in exchange for the AFL-CIO's recent endorsement of Vice President Al Gore's presidential candidacy, although the labor federation denies that it has any special deal with the administration,'' read a Friday report in the Wall Street Journal on the upcoming WTO Seattle ministerial conference where the US intends to put labor rights on the agenda for the coming round of world trade negotiations.

US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said last Tuesday that what the US is seeking is a serious examination of the ''relationship between trade and internationally recognized core labor standards and the best means of adjustment to heightened competition''.

That's terrible bureaucratese English; still, the message is clear: the Clinton administration wants trade privileges linked to the enforcement of labor standards to reduce or eliminate competitive price advantages of foreign-produced goods. The argument it and American trade unions put forward is that cheap foreign labor not protected by rigorous labor laws is stealing American and other industrialized nations' jobs.

This is undoubtedly true in one sense and undoubtedly utter nonsense in another. Christmas lights are more cheaply produced in China than in the United States or Germany; hence Christmas-light manufacturing jobs there have been eliminated. But were Chinese companies forced to pay higher wages or made to strictly adhere to 40 - or, as in France - 35-hour work weeks, would those jobs return? To ask the question is to answer it. Wages, working hours, or, more broadly, labor rights are not arbitrary and cannot be set arbitrarily. They are closely tied to labor productivity which in turn is a function of technology and investment. These are economic issues, not legal or regulatory ones. The price of labor is not an independent variable to be determined at will by legislative or regulatory bodies. Hong Kong's Secretary for Trade and Industry, Chau Tak Hay, is right when he said in a briefing with reporters last week that setting labor standards would simply serve to protect industries in developed nations, where wages are higher, and that it ''would open the WTO to disguised protectionism''.

Another form of disguised protectionism is embodied in trade representative Barshefsky's call for the WTO to monitor trade issues ''proactively'' to weigh environmental impact. For the US to demand that the WTO respect its right to exclude imports that do not meet US environmental standards is simply another effort to force an increase of producer costs and thereby to protect the American market.

The man behind such US moves to limit access to the American market by insisting that producer nations wanting to sell their goods in America must make provisions for enhanced labor rights and environmental standards is Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. With his campaign fortunes sagging and having run into an unexpectedly strong challenge for the Democratic nomination from former New Jersey senator and New York Knicks professional basketball star Bill Bradley, a desperate Gore - widely seen as an uninspiring wet noodle - is pulling all stops to get his nomination drive back on track. Unionized labor (of which there is ever less in the US with the rapid shift of the economy from manufacturing to services) is one constituency Gore must have in his fold if he is to have any realistic chance of beating Bradley in the primaries and the Republican nominee in November of next year.

And setting a WTO agenda pandering to US labor is not the first instance in which Gore's electoral ambitions are getting in the way of the attainment of broader US policy objectives in the national interest and of matters of international concern. When President Bill Clinton turned down Chinese WTO entry last April in spite of far-reaching concessions on the part of China personally proposed by Premier Zhu Rongji, he put Al Gore's electoral prospects ahead of improved US-China relations. Being tough on China was what labor wanted to see from the Democratic Clinton-Gore administration and what it got.

This sort of intervention of narrow, partisan US electoral considerations at the expense eminently more significant international affairs is, of course, nothing new. It nonetheless represents a type of arrogant politicking by petty snd selfish individuals the international community should resolutely reject. When the trade ministers of 135 nations meet in Seattle starting Tuesday, it would be most refreshing if at least one of them had the guts to stand up and say that it is absurd for this forum to be held hostage to the antics of domestic American political infighting.