GATT and the erosion of labor rights and environmental standards
Laarman, Peter
In contrast with the headlines generated by the original GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) controversy of two years ago, the news from Geneva on January 17 made barely a ripple;...
...living standards...
...small items in the business pages reporting that a three-judge panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO) had ruled in favor of Venezuela and against the United States in a dispute involving Venezuelan gasoline...
...law or U.S...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...practice for what we would consider to be good reasons: say, because U.S...
...Without question, Pat Buchanan (and possibly Bob Dole) will take the WTO decision as another assault on American sovereignty...
...Aromatic" is actually a good word for the predicament pro-GATT forces now find themselves in...
...But such scenarios are not likely now, for the simple reason that the WTO we have was created as part of the larger push toward lowest-common-denominator standards where workers, consumers, and the environment are concerned...
...113 To Our Contributors A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your manuscript...
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...government had barred Venezuela's state refiner from shipping a product high in smogproducing "aromatic" chemicals to East Coast service stations...
...environmental and consumer safeguards when these appear to discriminate against imports...
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...to change its law...
...workers were forced to work in conditions that fell below those of an acceptable world standard...
...We will not consider manuscripts submitted simultaneously to several publications...
...The New York Times, which also plumped relentlessly for the streamlined trade accord, reassured its readers that the WTO decision "does not force the U.S...
...It would be unfortunate for the left to abandon the sovereignty argument to Buchanan and his epigones, because there is an important progressive spin to be put on the WTO case...
...For leftists, the real danger is not (or not only) that "foreign judges" can challenge U.S...
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...proponents of the GATT's new dispute-resolu12 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions tion mechanism—Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and Treasury officials Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers—had almost nothing to say about the gasoline ruling...
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...It's little wonder that the main U.S...
...Buchanan has played the sovereignty card effectively on the campaign trail, mainly to manipulate nativist sentiment but also to expose the role of transnational capital in undermining U.S...
...We have yet to imagine what a people's globalism would look like...
...THE EDITORS q SPRING • 1996 • 13...
...One can think of situations in which an international trade tribunal might rule against U.S...
...it is the money managers' version of a globalism in which the interests of workers and consumers are subordinated to investor returns...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...It must be rather embarrassing to them and to the White House that the very first WTO case would challenge administration enforcement of the Clean Air Act...
...The WTO's judges ruled that this country acted unfairly in demanding that Venezuelan gasoline meet the same average purity standard as gasoline refined domestically...
...For three years, the U.S...
...But the Times editorialist (Peter Passell) surely knows that the United States can ill afford to stiff the very GATT procedures it earlier insisted were essential to rapid trade expansion...
...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
...Although the arguments were technical, the upshot is that the United States can ignore the riling, appeal it, or allow the Venezuelan gasoline to be sold...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...
...Please use inclusive language so that we don't have to make adjustments during editing...
...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...The agency is charged with knocking down all barriers that stand in the way of expanded trade, and never mind if some of those "barriers" include health and safety standards that progressives in many countries struggled hard to win...
...Pace Buchanan, the enemy is not globalism as such...
...This might be a good time to start...
Vol. 43 • April 1996 • No. 2
