SIDE ISSUES HAUNT WELCOME TRADE PACT

The Uruguay Round of trade negotiations is over, but negotiations may not be. On Apr. 15, 109 members of the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) signed the most sweeping trade liberalization package in the pact's 47 year history. For the oil and gas industry, the step was crucial. Failure of the Uruguay Round might have inaugurated an era of reactionary protectionism, trade wars, and worldwide economic atrophy, none of which helps markets for energy. As it is, lowering of a range of trade hurdles and creation of the World Trade Organization to replace GATT as arbiter of trade disputes will boost the world economy at the end of the century by an estimated $235 billion/year.

Agreement on a new trade pact should have been cause for celebration. Instead, attention focused on loose ends, creating a sense that the next round of negotiations may be more intense than its predecessor.

LINKING ISSUES

U.S. Vice President Al Gore chilled leaders of developing countries with a signing-ceremony speech suggesting that future trade negotiations take in labor and environmental issues. In the U.S., his comments were dismissable as pro forma nods to two holy Clinton administration constituencies. Besides, Al Gore is Al Gore, to whom life itself is an environmental threat. To his credit, Gore made a compelling point when he called poverty "perhaps the greatest cause of environmental degradation in our world." From there it's easy to conclude that economic growth can be good for nature.

Developing countries nevertheless sense threat here. They have seen industrialized countries turn constructive principles-the rights of workers and protection of the environment-into destructive politics. Organized labor derives its power from the threat and fact of work stoppage, the ability to suspend an indispensable factor of production. Because unions have never been timid about using that power, the U.S. has lost competitive ground in some businesses, perhaps whole industries. Each time, workers, their rights no longer the priority, lost jobs. For its part, environmentalism still measures political success in terms of economic activity prevented or shut down.

Developing countries want no part of this. They worry that trade pact signatories now dragging environmental and trade questions onto the table-mainly the U.S. and France-will shape those questions into subtle forms of protectionism. Their concerns are legitimate. It is only natural for the U.S., France, and other developed countries, all facing new international competition, to want to export whatever economic sacrifices they have imposed on themselves. Developing nations have good reason to resist.

Side issues like these must not threaten ratification of the agreement that concluded the Uruguay Round. The Marrakesh pact is multilateral protectionist disarmament, a collective agreement to revoke or relax measures taken individually to repel commercial competition from abroad. It is very good for the world and quite enough for now.

WAITING FOR PROGRESS

There can be no global action on the environment, no worldwide acclamation of worker's rights, until more people have the luxury of worrying about those matters than do now. People who must make subsistence their sole priority can not be expected to care much about computer models that say global temperatures might rise or about collective bargaining agreements. They can be expected to embrace trade as a route to prosperity. For people truly concerned about environmental and labor values, progress of the hungry along that path is the best hope for success. For truly concerned people, waiting for such progress is not too much to ask.