WTO Talks Collapse

December 6, 1999

The World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle adjourned Friday night without launching an expected new round of international trade negotiations, bitterly disappointing agricultural groups and others who had hoped for new steps to open markets and increase U.S. exports. The talks' collapse ended a turbulent week marked by protests that delayed the first day of negotiations and gave the often-obscure WTO worldwide publicity it probably would have preferred to do without.

The hundreds of lobbyists from farm and other groups spent the week following each twist and turn of writing a "ministerial declaration," the consensus document that was expected to serve as the talks' blueprint. But in the end, there was no ministerial declaration, and the delegates simply left town. WTO Director General Mike Moore and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said the talks would reconvene in the future, but no date was set and no one predicted it would be soon.

Meanwhile, earlier agreements call for agricultural negotiations to begin as early as January in Geneva. But in the absence of a more detailed negotiating mandate or a deadline for completion, it is unclear that any progress is likely. Agricultural sections of the would-be ministerial declaration had been hammered out over the course of several days, but they never gained unanimous agreement.

"There's no commitment at all and therefore there's nothing on the table," REUTERS quoted European Union Ag Commissioner Franz Fischler telling reporters. "We have to launch new negotiations now on Article 20 (of the 1994 Uruguay Round pact), and we have to start from the very beginning."

Under the Uruguay Round, countries are required to begin trade talks on agriculture and services in January, and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said those "will in fact proceed." She added, "I think there will be progress...because of the progress made here." Countries now know one another's positions, and "that, in and of itself, will generate progress," Barshefsky said.

Though the week's protests were not directly responsible for the talks' breakdown, the WTO failure clearly pleased many environmental and labor groups that supported the protests. Less publicly, lobbyists for some import-sensitive U.S. agricultural and industrial sectors were quietly jubilant as well. But farm and commodity groups that have pinned their hopes on opening markets rather than keeping them closed were keenly disappointed and pondered their next move.

One of the key disputes that prevented agreement was whether labor standards should take a higher profile in the WTO. President Clinton angered many delegates from developing countries, and threw his own negotiators off balance, when he said trade sanctions should be used to enforce labor rights. That dramatic change in the U.S. position appeared to play a role in the talks' ultimate failure.