Barshefsky Calls for Open WTO Settlements

March 3, 2000

U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky wants the World Trade Organization to open its dispute settlement process or face a reduction of public confidence in the decision-making process. "Misconceptions and unfounded suspicions will grow" if dispute settlement panels close the doors when making their decisions.

In an address to the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, Barshefsky said, "The practice of closing arguments before dispute settlement panels may have been appropriate in an age when dispute settlement was more a negotiation than adjudication. But today, what was once privacy becomes a harmful secrecy that reduces public confidence in decisions."

If the public is to have faith that decisions are fair and reasonable, "they have to see the process that leads to those decisions. If the WTO does not change this process, support for the WTO will erode. Misconceptions and unfounded suspicions will grow. And the future of the WTO as an institution will come into greater question."

That, she added, would be "a tragedy." WTO policies and achievements "are so important not only to the United States but to the world." If the United States withdrew from the WTO, as some have argued it should, it would mean "to end a march toward prosperity, rising living standards and strengthening peace."

Workers in poorer countries would lose jobs as industrial markets closed; living standards of the poor in the United States and other industrialized ocunt4ies would decline as the price of essential products increased; hopes of rising labor and environmental standards would be deferred, "and a crucial support for peace would weaken."