Anti-Globalization Activists Change the Debate

In late December, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick gathered journalists in his conference room for a little valedictory on 2001. He reminded us that opponents of free trade had, at the beginning of 2001, "felt an increasing confidence that they could paralyze the international trade and economic system."

The Progressive Policy Institute, the centrist think tank linked to the Clinton-founded Democratic Leadership Council, echoed the line in January, saying the anti-globalization movement, as it has become known, was "destined for irrelevance." PPI also parrotted a common line: that the surge of patriotism after September 11 had made anti-globalization protests untenable.

The anti-globalization crowd, it seems, are now a bunch of wacko anklebiters whose 15 minutes of fame are up. It was a classic case of Washington operators trying to spin opinion into reality. If the media believe the movement is dead, it will die.

Here's a counter-thesis: The more the Washington establishment believes that the crazy-quilt of groups that make up this amorphous movement are history, the greater chance these unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates, glassy-eyed tokers and, yes, black-clad anarchists, will matter.

Zoellick had two key accomplishments behind him from 2001 and they are not trivial by any means. In November, the United States led a successful effort to pick up the pieces in the World Trade Organization and kick off a new round of negotiations, an effort that had failed miserably two years earlier in Seattle, where protestors seized the agenda. Also, the U.S. House passed fast-track negotiating authority, which will allow Zoellick to negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas, essentially an expansion of NAFTA, once the Senate follows suit (which it expected to do soon).

I remember laughing inside during Zoellick's press conference because this was the same guy who, early in his tenure, announced that he wanted to create a "toolbox" for promoting strong labor and environmental standards via trade policy. It was a longstanding demand of the anti-globalization crowd, backed up in more moderate form by congressional Democrats and some union-state Republicans. Zoellick also backed a fast-track bill that contains rules on incorporating labor and environmental rules into trade agreeements.

What's more, Zoellick also spent much of his time at the WTO meeting in Qatar last year making a deal that would let poor nations flexibly interpret patent rules to help them treat victims of AIDS, tuberulosis and malaria with lower-cost drugs. This had also been a major demand of consumer groups.

In short, times had changed and the Republican trade representative spent last year changing with the times in order to achieve his goals. Zoellick's code for this strategy in his speeches is "aligning trade policy with our values," a line that co-opts a cherished conservative theme ("values") for pragmatic ends.

The point is not that Zoellick cut deals that pleased unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates and the like. But he was responding to pressure that this loose coalition of groups had been bringing to bear for the last five years. And in this respect, Zoellick was not alone. By the end of 2000, before Zoellick had even taken office, the Washington trade establishment was starting to sound a little like its opponents.

The National Association of Manufacturers had started debating how to incorporate labor and environmental issues into trade agreements. Most significantly, the Business Rountable, an extremely influential group of CEOs, had told their Washington lobbyists that the labor-environment problem had lingered on for long enough. They wanted a solution.

This evolution of the debate in Washington, I believe, results from years of protest by the anti-globalization movement. It's hard to draw bright lines, but a reasonable synoposis goes like this: Unorthodox methods that are not familiar to official Washington can and do work.