Free Trade Optimism: Lessons From the Battle in Seattle

Within two months of taking office as the new director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Mike Moore was handed a major setback at the now-famous "tear-gas ministerial" conference of November 1999 in Seattle. With protesters wreaking havoc outside, Moore, a former prime minister of New Zealand, was unable to prevail on the assembled government officials to conclude an agreement that would launch a new round of trade negotiations. To the WTO's opponents, the collapse of the meeting represented the high point of their crusade against "corporate-led globalization." Even to its supporters, it appeared that the WTO had suffered a near-fatal blow, from which it would recover only very gradually, if at all.

Yet two years later, when trade ministers met again in the more secluded environment of Doha, Qatar, they were able to walk out with an agreed framework in hand. The Doha meeting launched a "Development Round" of trade negotiations (which is still stumbling along) and inaugurated China as a member of the WTO. The death knells for Mike Moore's WTO, it turns out, had sounded prematurely.

Moore's determination to bridge the gaps that separated the United States from the European Union (EU) and the rich countries from the poor ones was not the only reason for Doha's success. Doha took place scarcely two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the pressure was high, particularly on the advanced countries, to prevent another failure that would have sapped confidence in the global economy's ability to weather the shock. Of critical importance was the willingness of the United States to accede -- eventually and grudgingly -- to developing-country demands in the area of intellectual property rights by signing on to a statement that existing WTO agreements do not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health. Nonetheless, Moore will be remembered by friends and foes of the WTO alike as the man who put the international trade regime back on track.

FROM DISASTER TO DOHA

The middle (and most interesting) part of A World Without Walls is devoted to Moore's account of how he engineered this remarkable turnaround. He is remarkably candid about many aspects of his tenure, especially about the inauspicious start he had, which followed a bitterly fought contest between him and Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand for the position of director-general. The WTO's membership, unable to reach consensus on a single name, eventually awarded the first three years of the term to Moore and the second three years to Supachai, who took over from Moore as director-general in September 2002. Moore thinks he had majority support among the membership, and it is clear that he feels cheated. He describes the arrangement to split his term as "a slightly sordid deal" and relates matter-of-factly, and with no regrets, his refusal to be photographed with Supachai on Moore's first day in office.

Moore attributes the debacle at Seattle to the lack of adequate preparation: his leadership team was barely in place and he had had little time to put his own stamp on the process and on the negotiating draft. Doha, he writes, was the "mirror opposite." He describes his grueling schedule ("traveled over 625,000 km, visiting 182 cities and meeting with more than 300 ministers"), his difficult time with his opponents in nongovernmental organizations, the petty politics of the WTO, and his uneasy relationship with his staff. And yet although Moore can be quite frank and revealing about such issues, he does not offer a systematic behind-the-scenes account of how the Seattle disaster was transformed into the Doha consensus. One wishes he had written more about the cajoling, arm-twisting, and horse-trading that was required to get key governments to fall into line. Except for an occasional nod in their direction, Moore says little about the roles played by Robert Zoellick and Pascal Lamy, the point persons on trade for the United States and the EU, respectively, or about his relationship with them.

Strategically, Moore's key accomplishment was to recast the failed Seattle agenda around the theme of development and to promote a new development round with agricultural liberalization as its centerpiece. Moore was neither the first nor the only voice arguing that the new round should focus on the needs of developing countries. The World Bank's president, James Wolfensohn, and the British minister for development, Clare Short, among others, had called for a development round before Seattle. But it was Moore who took what most observers had come to call the "Millennium Round" and transformed it in the global consciousness into a development round.