Clinton Urges Dialogue on Globalization

In a wide-ranging speech designed to counter the humiliating disarray of trade talks in Seattle last month, President Clinton called on world political leaders and titans of business Saturday to resolve the growing controversy over globalization through a new dialogue with developing nations and environmental and labor dissenters.

“Those who believe globalization is only about market economics are wrong,” Clinton told a gathering of the elite World Economic Forum in this idyllic Alpine ski resort. “We simply cannot expect trade alone to carry the burden of lifting nations out of poverty.”

But the president warned that the forces attempting to block or roll back moves toward a globalized world are “dead wrong” too.

Clinton assumed the role of peacemaker to recover from the calamitous week in Seattle, where protesters from dozens of environmental, humanitarian and labor groups disrupted talks among 135 countries about the World Trade Organization.

In Davos, he appealed to the more than 2,000 world leaders and business executives assembled for the 30th annual forum to push for a new round of trade talks to jump-start a process deadlocked by divisions.

“I came here today in the hope that, by working together, we can actually find a way to create the conditions and provide the tools to give people on every continent the ability to solve their own problems and, in so doing, to strengthen their own lives and our global economy in the new century,” he said.

In stark contrast to the Seattle debacle, the behavior of dissidents who came to Davos was severely restricted by Swiss security forces. A few hundred protesters massed on the edge of this town of 13,000 and managed to break windows at McDonald’s. A lone violinist played as they pelted snowballs at police armed with rattan shields, which looked more appropriate for warm Swaziland than the middle of a snowstorm in Switzerland.

A police barricade held the demonstration back, however, and after a round of tear gas, the protesters dispersed. They never got anywhere near the president’s entourage or members of the World Economic Forum.

Inside the plush conference center where the participants were meeting, Clinton put skeptics about globalization on notice that the United States is “unambiguously” committed to open markets and trade as the “best engine we know of to lift living standards, reduce environmental destruction and build shared prosperity.”

Value of Open Markets in Third World Cited

The importance of open markets for the developing world is reflected in the fact that developing countries that chose growth through trade from the 1970s to the early 1990s grew at least twice as fast as those that imposed protective barriers to commerce, the president said. In the most open countries, he said, growth was six times as great.

Clinton questioned the fate of Bangladeshi textile workers or farmers in Uruguay and Zimbabwe without the prospect of industries able to market goods beyond their frontiers.

“How can working conditions be improved and poverty be reduced in developing countries if they are denied these and other opportunities to grow, the things that come with participation in the world economy?” he asked.

But to close the growing gap between the world’s rich and poor, trade must be supplemented with greater aid and investment in human capital, education, health care and technology, the president said.

He also called on the world’s wealthiest nations to help lift poor nations’ “crippling burden” of debt by increasing the percentage of debt reduction so those debtor nations will have more to invest in their peoples and their futures.

“Industrialized nations must see that the poor and those hard hit by changes are not left behind,” Clinton said to an audience that included heads of state from poor nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia as well as many of the world’s wealthiest business leaders.

In turn, the president used his address to call on leaders of the world’s poor countries to make government institutions more open and accountable, clean up corruption, improve access to education and solve basic social problems.

He warned that there is “a limit” to what wealthy nations can do for countries that don’t take basic steps to ensure that their own societies work.

“Many people suffer not because their governments are too strong but because their governments are too weak,” Clinton said.

To close the gap in attitudes toward a globalized world, the president urged a new dialogue bringing together labor and environmental groups, developing countries and members of the World Trade Organization, the coalition that is now defining the framework for globalization.

“The consequence of running away from an open dialogue on a profoundly important issue won’t be more trade, it’ll be more protection. . . . We have got to find ways for these matters to be dealt with that the people who care about them believe are legitimate,” he said.

Clinton’s Speech Seen as PR Gambit

The U.S.-based Friends of the Earth, one of the dissenting groups that traveled to Davos, criticized Clinton’s speech as a “public relations” gambit. While commending the president for asking the world to listen to critics of globalization and free trade, spokeswoman Jennifer Durbin said that Clinton and other world leaders are treating the criticism as a public relations problem.

“This gathering has become one to do damage control in reaction to what happened in Seattle,” she added.

In a question-and-answer session at the end of his Davos speech, the president predicted that terms can be worked out with Congress to ensure that China will be admitted to the World Trade Organization, although he conceded that the negotiations will be a “big fight.”

To turn away China would be “a mistake of monumental proportions,” he said. “You’re almost 100% of the time better off having an old adversary that might be a friend working with you, even when you have more disagreements . . . than being out there on the outside,” Clinton said.

Congressional opponents are concerned about China’s past reluctance to open markets to American and European goods and about Beijing’s demand that it be granted permanent status as one of America’s most favored trading partners. That privilege would end the annual U.S. review of that status and remove any American leverage in persuading Beijing to improve its human rights and labor practices.

Beijing accepted Washington’s terms for entry into the World Trade Organization last November on condition that the United States upgrade its trade standing, which must be approved by Congress.

“I believe that having them in the WTO will not only have economic benefits for the United States and other countries . . . but will increase the likelihood of positive change in China and therefore stability throughout Asia,” Clinton said at the Davos meeting.