Commentary
Washington
Pursues post-Cancun Vendetta Against
Group of 21
By
WALDEN BELLO
A
promising new bloc of countries was
born in the run-up to the World Trade
Organization ministerial in Cancun:
the Group of 21. Led by Brazil, India,
South Africa, and China, the group
played a major role in preventing the
European Union and United States from
extracting greater agricultural tariff
reductions from the poor countries
while maintaining the massive
subsidization of their agricultural
systems that has promoted the dumping
that has driven millions of small
agricultural producers in the
developing world from the countryside.
The US
lost no time in attacking the new
formation. At a briefing on September
10, a US official disdainfully branded
the formation as the "Group of
the Paralyzed." The G21's
reasonable proposals to correct the
flaws of the world trading system were
dismissed as "welfare
measures" that had no place in a
trade organization. A concerted
campaign was launched to split the
group, with "weak links"
like Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Costa
Rica, Thailand, and El Salvador
subjected to a full court press.
Appalled
by their government's tactics, US
NGOs, at a press conference on
September 13, revealed that the
tactics of their government included
"backroom coercion, calls from
the White House, and threats to
terminate other trade benefits and
stop ongoing negotiations." So
intense was the pressure that the
Brazilian delegation was compelled to
issue a statement asking the
delegations "to negotiate and not
direct our energies at attacking
countries or groups of
countries."
Alongside
the US government trade team, the US
corporate lobby also went to work to
split the G21. Consumer Alert, a
business group masking as a consumer's
organization, said that "while
ostensibly representing the views of
developing countries," the G21
program "better represents the
positions of several powerful
exporting countries, who want greater
market access, without opening up
their own countries' markets to
importers."
But
despite the intense pressures, the US
was able to detach only one country
from the group: El Salvador.
Failing
to split the G21, US Trade
Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick
then tried to isolate the alliance in
world opinion by pinning the blame for
the collapse of the Cancun ministerial
on it: "The rhetoric of the
'won't do' overwhelmed the concerted
efforts of the 'can do.' 'Won't do'
led to the impasse." The Bush
administration's blame game failed,
with even the New York Times putting
the responsibility of the collapse on
the EU and US's intransigence on the
question of agricultural subsidies.
But,
instead of understanding why it was
isolated in Cancun, the US intensified
its efforts to destroy the G21. In a
recent visit to Colombia, US Senator
Norm Coleman warned President Alvaro
Uribe that "remaining in that
Group will not lead to good relations
between Colombia and the United
States." And employing
psychological warfare, he also alleged
that he got the commitment of the
Colombian president to eventually
leave the Group.
Similarly,
the negotiations around the proposed
Central American Free Trade Area (CAFTA)
have been used by the United States to
try to break the Group of 21. In a
visit to the region post-Cancun, Mr.
Zoellick bluntly warned that the
negotiations were endangered by Costa
Rica and Guatemala's membership in the
G21.
"I
told them that the emergence of the
G20 might pose a big problem to this
agreement since our Congress resents
the fact that members of CAFTA are
also in the G20," he stated.
"If we want to construct a common
future with them, resistance and
protest do not constitute an effective
strategy. In my talks with some of
these countries, I sense that they are
drawing the right conclusions."
Moreover,
Mr. Zoellick urged the Central
American governments to begin to look
after their own interests since Brazil
"is a big country that can defend
its interests by itself."
Raising
the pressure a notch higher, US
Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of
the US Senate Finance Committee, added
his warning that the US would
"take note" of those
countries that "torpedoed"
the negotiations in Cancun and would
look closely at the attitude adopted
by Costa Rica and Guatemala.
Costa
Rica, in particular, has become the
object of tremendous US pressure in
the last few weeks. The push to get it
off the G21 has been accompanied by a
strong demand by Zoellick that it
privatize its energy and
telecommunications sectors, which are
currently under state control.
Observers think that also part of
Washington's strategy to detach Costa
Rica from the G21 is the move of the
energy conglomerate Harken Corporation
to sue the country to the tune of $57
billion at the International Center
for the Settlement of Investment
Disputes (ICSID) for breach of
contract. US President George W. Bush,
it must be noted, was a member of the
board of Harken from 1986 to 1993.
The
fear in the region is that to punish
Costa Rica and Guatemala, the US will
push for a CAFTA that only includes
Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras
-- a development that would reduce
even further what little leverage the
Central American countries would be
able to exercise in the projected
trade area.
The US
corporate community has also begun its
post-Cancun effort to isolate
neutralize Brazil, Argentina,
Venezuela and other Latin American
members of G21 in the run-up to the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
negotiations that will take place in
Miami in November. On September 23, in
a letter addressed to US Commerce
Secretary Don Evans and USTR's
Zoellick, a broad coalition of US
business groups declared: "...[W]e
strongly urge you and your negotiating
team to stay the course and continue
to fight for a comprehensive and
commercially meaningful FTAA that
incorporates high standards, similar
to those the United States has
achieved in its free trade agreements
with Canada, Mexico, Chile, and
Singapore. We strongly oppose,
therefore, attempts by some US trading
partners in the region to forge a more
limited trade agreement by leaving
several difficult, but highly
important issues off the negotiating
table entirely or addressing them in a
less than commercially meaningful
way." This was clearly a
reference to the efforts of Brazil and
other countries to protect their
investment regimes from being gutted
by the draconian investment proposals
of Washington, which would lead to
denationalization of industry and make
impossible any kind of industrial
policy."
Among
the signatories were the
"heavies" of the US business
lobby: the Emergency Committee for
American Trade, US Council for
International Business, US Chamber of
Commerce, National Foreign Trade
Council, National Association of
Manufacturers, US Coalition of Service
Industries, and the Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America.
These tactics of intimidation and
coercion have no place in
international economic relations.
Instead of bridging the divide between
rich and poor countries that has
become the central issue in global
trade, they will only exacerbate it.
Straitjacketed
by an perspective that sees the rest
of the world as ganging up on the
United States, the Bush administration
is missing out on a historic
opportunity to transform North-South
relations by viewing the Group of 21
as a negotiating partner whose
emergence reflects the legitimate
interests of the South rather than an
upstart to be destroyed.
Contrary
to the hopes of the Jurassic
Republicans, the strategy of
bulldozing the opposition will not
work since the developing countries
have begun to internalize the bitter
lesson of the last 25 years: that
unless they hang together, they will
hang separately.
Celso
Amorin, Minister of External Relations
of Brazil, which serves as the
coordinator of the Group of 21, was
not just engaging in empty rhetoric
when he declared in Cancun: "We
stand united. We will remain united.
We sincerely hope that others will
hear our message and, instead of
confronting us or trying to divide us,
will join forces in our endeavor to
inject new life into the multilateral
trading system. To bring it closer to
the needs and aspirations of those who
have been at its margins -- indeed the
vast majority -- those who have not
had the chance to reap the fruit of
their toils. It is high time to change
this reality."
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