Warning Flag Over GATT : Environmentalists Say Pact Will Weaken U.S. Safeguards

The environmental community, which recently split deeply over support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, is issuing warnings about the new world trade agreement in a newly unified voice.

The environmentalists charge that the comprehensive General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade accord signed Friday in Morocco will erode the United States’--and California’s--ability to enforce its environmental strictures on everything from recycling to pesticide use to air pollution.

“If this . . . is enacted,” said Barbara Dudley, executive director of Greenpeace USA, “over two decades of environmental protection could be severely weakened.”

Nowhere is that more true than in the area of food safety, some environmentalists argue.

The United States, with some of the world’s most restrictive regulation of pesticides, prohibits the entry of food products with detectable traces of about 40 chemicals--substances used by many of its trading partners and listed as allowable by the standard-setting organization of the new agreement.

But if U.S. Customs Service inspectors begin turning away food imports that bear traces of these chemicals under the new agreement, America’s trading partners are almost certain to cry foul, environmentalists warned. If their challenges stand, one activist said, U.S. pesticide protections could topple, one after another.

Supporters of the accord acknowledged that the letter of the new agreement may indeed put the United States, with its strong environmental protections, on the defensive. That is because some U.S. laws championed by environmentalists, as well as state laws, do not appear to be based on undisputed scientific evidence demonstrating that a regulation will improve the public’s health or mitigate a known environmental hazard.

Supporters of the agreement also argue that the United States’ market power, as well as a growing appreciation for the environmental ethic among America’s trading partners, will cause virtually any challenge to U.S. environmental laws to fail.

“The practical implementation of trade agreements is often more politically sensitive and realistic than the sheer language of the treaty,” said William K. Reilly, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the George Bush Administration and an avowed free trader.

Other free traders cited the power and transparency of the processes by which U.S. laws are passed and regulations are made. In a challenge before the international trade deliberative body, U.S. defenders could produce reams of scientific data, risk assessments and economic analysis to prove that an American environmental standard was established not to keep foreign products out, but to benefit the public’s health.

“In a fair fight,” said Linda Fisher, a Washington-based trade attorney with the Los Angeles law firm Latham & Watkins, “the United States will win.”

But environmental activists are not comforted by those assurances. They say that the fine print of the new agreement would allow a trading partner to argue before the trade court in Geneva, Switzerland, that Washington’s environmental laws--or those of individual U.S. states--constitute an unfair barrier to the entry of that country’s exports.

If the United States regulates more strictly than its trading partners the fuel emissions or stipulates the fuel efficiency of cars sold or operated within its borders (which it does), or prohibits food products that bear traces of certain pesticides it considers hazardous (which it does), a trading partner, in principle, can challenge the federal stricture under the trade agreement.

Environmentalists said that under the trade agreement, trading partners could target laws such as the one that grew out of California’s Proposition 65, which requires a cautionary label on any product that would expose its user to a carcinogen or a chemical that could be harmful to a developing fetus or pregnant woman.

Other California state regulations that could be challenged go beyond federal government requirements by making manufacturers of agricultural chemicals furnish the state with data on the chemical’s possible effects on human reproduction, water pollution, exposed workers and endangered species.

Another California stricture that could come under attack is one that has required wine manufacturers to sponsor efforts to warn consumers of the possible dangers posed by the lead in the foil that covers wine corks.

Finally ... A World Trade Pact

Ministers from 124 nations ended seven years of complex negotiations Friday and formally concluded the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks in Marrakesh, Morroco. Following are the main elements of the 26,000-page, 385-pound global world trade pact:

MARKET ACCESS - This is the backbone of the act. Countries pledge to cut tariffs on industrial and farm goods by an average of about 37%. The United States and European Union agree to trim tariffs between them by one half.

SERVICES - For the first time, rules will govern annual trade in services such as banking, insurance and travel, as well as the movement of labor. The United States reserves the right to deny other countries favorable access to the lucrative U.S. financial services market, but will hold off for at least 18 months. Washington has threatened to challenge EC curbs on audio-visual goods.

TEXTILES - Import quotas on textiles and clothing, in place under the Multi-Fiber Arrangement since 1974, will be phased out over 10 years.

ANTI-DUMPING - Rules on dumping - pricing exports below their value in the domestic market - are clarified.

AGRICULTURE - Also for the first time, agriculture is folded into the GATT. The blueprint is the 1992 Blair House accord reached between the United States and the EU as amended in talks last December. It converts all non-tariff barriers such as quotas into tariffs, which are reduced 36% for industrialized countries, 24% for poor nations. The cuts will be phased in over six years for rich countries, 10 for others. The pact also cuts direct export subsidies and agricultural supports and forces countries with closed farm markets--including Japan, which restricts rice imports--to import at least 3% of domestic consumption of the product, rising to 5% over six years.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - The treaty toughens protection for patents, copyrights, rights of performers and producers of sound recordings, trademarks, and labels of origin.

GATT EXPANSION - Set up as a temporary body in 1947, GATT will be transformed into a permanent watchdog called the World Trade Organization, with status equal to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The WTO will begin operations between January and July, 1995.

Source: Times Wire Service