CORPORATE FOCUS: TABD Plots World Domination

By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, AlterNet. Posted November 27, 2000.

Corporate rule is not built on a conspiracy. But that does not mean that corporations never conspire.

Sometimes corporate executives do gather in secret meetings and work to plot collective approaches to advance Big Business's broad interests. Case in point: the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD).

The TABD is a grouping of top corporate executives from multinational corporations in the United States and Europe. TABD CEOs meet annually with top U.S. and European government officials, most recently this past week in Cincinnati. The TABD's mission is to boost trade and investment between the United States and Europe, as well as throughout the world.

The CEOs in TABD are vigorously urging the launch of a new World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiating round (the project that was stifled in Seattle), and for other enlargements of the WTO.

But the TABD's unique mission is to focus on the U.S.-EU relationship, and push forward a deregulatory agenda that it hopes to then impose on the entire world.

The TABD is explicit that its concerns go way beyond traditional tariff issues. "Elected representatives agreed in the Uruguay Round [the last completed negotiating round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which led to the creation of the WTO] to largely remove traditional tariffs as inefficient restraints on economic liberty," proclaims the TABD's 2000 Mid-Year Report. "The new obstacles to trade are now domestic regulations."

"Non-tariff barriers to operations should be tackled with the same zeal," as tariffs were reduced, the report insists.

The TABD inventory of domestic regulations that constitute "obstacles to trade" is remarkably expansive. Among the areas where TABD has registered complaints: differential standards for review of chemical safety, the U.S. requirement that products be labeled with U.S. customary units (inch/pound) instead of the metric system, differing national standards for regulating electromagnetic fields (relevant to cell phone regulation), restrictions on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in the EU, and potential U.S. emissions regulations for diesel engines for recreational boats that may differ from the EU's. The TABD also argues that the U.S. product liability system is a "serious impediment to transatlantic trade and investment."

A consistent theme of the TABD's list of complaints is inconsistency between countries' regulations. The TABD CEOs view diversity of regulatory approaches -- what should be viewed as among the blessings of democracy -- as itself a trade barrier.

To achieve uniformity, TABD ardently supports regulatory "harmonization" -- formal international mechanisms to establish single global standards. A second choice is Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs), by which different regulatory regimes are declared equivalent, and products cleared in one country are given a free pass into another -- even if the first country's regulatory system is in fact inferior to the importing country's.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »