Zoellick Has Taken Pains To Woo African Leaders And Get a Deal Going
Wall Street Journal | November 9, 2001 | By Helene Cooper and Geoff Winestock
DOHA, Qatar -- For the past nine months, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Zoellick has been courting. His aim: to sweet-talk African countries into sticking to the U.S. line at this weekend's World Trade Organization meeting here.
When South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda fretted in February about whether the new Bush administration would allow them to import cheap generic AIDS drugs, Mr. Zoellick stepped in and soothed their fears. When African ambassadors at the WTO in Geneva this year complained they lacked the money to put new trade rules into place, Mr. Zoellick made a voluntary U.S. contribution of $1 million to a WTO trust fund. And when he met in April with a group of African trade ministers in Washington, he began his remarks with Swahili. The ministers were charmed.
Now, Mr. Zoellick is about to find out whether all this wooing will have the intended effect: an agreement for a new round of global trade negotiations at the WTO's meeting, which begins today. Before the talks even start, Mr. Zoellick will meet with a host of envoys from sub-Saharan African countries, to make sure they are on the same page as the U.S. when the final haggling begins.
"Developing countries represent 80% of the membership of the WTO," Mr. Zoellick said, coming out of a meeting with Latin American countries. "The old process -- where a few big players sat in the Green Room setting the rules -- just engendered a lot of discontent."
Indeed, a revolt by developing countries led to the collapse of the WTO's last meeting in Seattle two years ago, and saw an end to the Green Room days. (The term refers to the room at WTO headquarters in Geneva, where the U.S., the European Union, Japan and other big players made decisions that everyone else followed.)
After the Seattle debacle, Mr. Zoellick and other WTO bigwigs are taking pains to address the concerns of poor countries, chiefly those in Africa. U.S. negotiators hope they can peel away the African countries from the rest of the developing world block, thus cobbling together enough agreement for a deal that drags along Brazil, India, Pakistan and others.
Most trade envoys here say they expect to get a deal by Tuesday, when the meeting ends. But success isn't guaranteed. The biggest sticking point is prescription medicines. While the U.S. and EU want to protect multinational drug companies' patents, developing nations want to be able to manufacture, and buy, cheap generics to treat public health disasters like AIDS.
The Americans say they are willing to make concessions for public health emergencies like AIDS, but don't want to weaken the WTO's strong intellectual property protection language to the point where poor countries can make cheap generics for any ailment. Poorer countries, for their part, don't want to have to jump through WTO hoops to get cheap medicines. In yesterday's meeting with Latin American envoys, Brazil's WTO ambassador, Celso Amorim, said, "We want public health put on the same level as national security."
Here, Mr. Zoellick's courtship of Africa might pay off. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS is rampant, have been particularly concerned about the intellectual property issue because they want to be able to import cheap drugs -- not make them. Mr. Zoellick has proposed giving them an extra 10 years before they have to comply with WTO rules concerning intellectual property protection.
"Zoellick understands that developing countries are a new force to reckon with," says Nacer Benjelloun-Touimi, Morocco's WTO ambassador. "You can't just dictate to them anymore."
Since Seattle, much of the U.S. style, if not substance, of negotiating with the developing countries has changed. One of the first things Mr. Zoellick did was to drop the most onerous U.S. demand: that labor rights must be tied to trade sanctions. In Seattle, former President Clinton terrified developing countries with talk of linking labor rights to trade sanctions. The draft declaration now being passed around simply reaffirms the same weak labor language envoys came up with five years ago during their first big meeting in Singapore. The International Labor Organization "provides the appropriate forum for a substantive dialogue" on labor, the declaration says.
Unlike the Clinton administration, the Bush administration doesn't have close ties to organized labor, so it is easier for Mr. Zoellick to pay less attention to labor demands. But he still must walk a fine line; he can't alienate organized labor while he's trying to get Congress to approve fast-track authority, giving the administration power to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can approve or reject but not amend.
On the two subjects the developing countries care most about -- agriculture and textiles -- the U.S. record is mixed. U.S. negotiators have been on the same page as the developing countries on agriculture; they want EU export subsidies ended. But to get a deal, they are now calling for subsidies to be phased out.
Textiles is another matter. Developing countries want the U.S. to phase out textile quotas quickly -- almost heresy in Washington, where the industry is heavily protected.
U.S. antidumping law, which punishes countries that sell products in the U.S. market below cost, presents another big challenge for Mr. Zoellick. Most of the world loathes it and wants it addressed in any new WTO round. Just this week, however, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 410-4 for a resolution ordering Mr. Zoellick not to allow antidumping laws to be renegotiated.
"It's an extraordinarily sensitive issue," the trade representative said yesterday. But he signaled there may be room to wiggle. "If we are going to deal with the rules, we have to deal with the underlying practices that are part of the rules."
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