World Trade Seattle meeting brings opportunities to UW

Douglas MacLachlan

The world’s largest trade organization is coming to Seattle this fall for its first U.S. ministerial conference. With it come unusual opportunities for the UW faculty, staff and students.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) will meet at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center Nov. 30 through Dec. 3, bringing delegates from more than 130 countries, along with an estimated 5,000 trade ministers, aides, staff and journalists.

Jere Bacharach

WTO is the sole world body responsible for overseeing multilateral agreements to reduce trade barriers among nations. Created in 1995 as a successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), its main purposes are to help trade to flow as freely as possible, serve as a forum for trade negotiations and resolve disputes.

The ministerial meeting is expected to inaugurate a round of trade negotiations that could last at least three years. Top items on the agenda are trade issues in agriculture, goods and services, dispute resolution, labor and environmental matters and electronic commerce. Ministerial meetings occur every two years.

The ministerial sessions will be closed to the public, but their proceedings and decisions will be announced at the conclusion of the conference. Meanwhile, the influx of high-level diplomats and possibly some heads of state (President Clinton has indicated that he is likely to attend) will focus much of the world’s attention on Seattle.

In April, President Richard L. McCormick appointed a UW-WTO working group, co-chaired by Jere Bacharach, director of the Jackson School, and Douglas MacLachlan, associate dean of the School of Business “to help coordinate the UW’s response to the strategic opportunity presented by the convening of the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle in November.” It is a subgroup of the International Faculty Council, chaired by Gretchen Kalonji, Kyocera Professor of materials science and engineering. The council advises McCormick on university-wide ideas and initiatives in the international field.

A UW Web site, http://www.washington.edu/wto/, is a clearinghouse for on-campus and off-campus WTO-related events and is intended as an impartial source of information about WTO. It also contains a link to the official WTO Web site at http://www.wto.org/wto/minist/seatmin.htm. A database of UW expertise related to world trade is under development, with guidance from the International Faculty Council.

A series of conferences, projects and events related to WTO are already scheduled, with yet more projects being developed. Three projects being coordinated by the UW are part of the Seattle Host Organization-sponsored events:

· “Digital Divide” is a collaboration between the UW and the Seattle School District to create a curriculum for middle and high school students that explores the gap between those who have access to the fruits of the Information Age and those who do not. “Digital Divide” is being planned by the Office of Educational Partnerships. Louis Fox, vice provost for educational partnerships, is coordinating this project.

· “Women in Trade” will include both a forum and town meeting. The Forum on Trade and Labor will be led by Suzanne G. Brainard, director of the UW Center for Women in Science & Engineering. The town meeting will be led by Eric Parsons, legislative aide to Seattle City Councilman Richard McIver, who chairs the Transportation Committee. Featured speaker for both events is scheduled to be Alexis Herman, U.S. Secretary of Trade. Both events, and the “Women in Trade” Web site, http://www.washington.edu/wto/women/index.html, will focus on the challenges facing women who want to move into leadership roles in the trading community. “Women in Trade” is being coordinated by the Center for Women in Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering.

· “WTO Student Ambassadors” project will train UW students on WTO and selected trade issues, and then will take them to Western Washington middle and high schools to discuss these issues and to give the younger students real “hands-on” experience in trying to decide trade disputes. The ambassadors project and development of curriculum materials on trade disputes, are part of the “WTO in the Classroom” initiative being coordinated by the Center for International Business Education and Research, School of Business Administration, in collaboration with the World Affairs Council. Debra Glassman, senior lecturer in finance and business economics, is coordinating the student ambassadors project.

In addition, at least four scholarly conferences are being held in coming months on themes that relate to the WTO:

· “The Internet and the Global Political Economy,” sponsored by the Institute for International Policy, will bring together leading scholars of political economy, Internet gurus and officials of intergovernmental organizations to discuss the relationship between the Internet and globalization. One section will address the role of international institutions such as the WTO in promoting/managing a world economy increasingly affected by the Internet revolution. The conference, scheduled for Sept. 22-24, is by invitation only, with limited space for UW observers. Please contact the Institute for International Policy for further information by e-mailing info@iip.washington.edu or calling 616-9100. The conference Web site is: http://www.iip.washington.edu/ipef99.

· The Human Rights Education and Research Network and the Center for Labor Studies will host a one-day conference in October on “Labor Rights as Human Rights: The Case of the WTO.”

· “The WTO at the Millennium: Retrospective and Prospective” will be presented by the University’s’ Institute for International Policy and the National Bureau of Asian Research, and is sponsored by the Jackson School and the Jackson Foundation. It will include a variety of panels discussing various aspects of the WTO. The Nov. 28-29 conference will be held in the Walker Ames room and will involve academics, specialists from international organizations and the private sector, and delegates attending the WTO meeting. This will be an invitation only event. Contact Professor Donald Hellmann by e-mail at hellmann@u.washington.edu.

· “WTO and World Trade” is an international workshop being organized for economists to share their views on the WTO, GATT, the world trade system, multilateral trade negotiations, and other current trade issues. This workshop, which is being sponsored by the Department of Economics and the Jackson School, will be held Dec. 4.

One conference focusing on the WTO already has been held on campus. The Global Trade, Transportation and Logistics Studies Program held a conference June 3 that focused on the WTO and global commerce in the Pacific Northwest, which attracted graduate students, faculty and more than 100 executives from the public and private sector. The conference was the finale of GTTL’s spring seminar series, in which students enrolled in the program research topics that are pertinent to academic, business and government organizations. The proceedings of the conference are available at http://depts.washington.edu/gttl/.

Many UW classes will touch on issues related to the WTO, but at least four will emphasize the trade conference: an International Health Seminar will focus on globalization and health; “Introduction to Labor Studies,” a class listed in political science, history and sociology, will focus on labor and WTO issues, and will feature a biweekly speaker or session that will be open to the public; and Ray Waldman, overall director of the Seattle Host Organization and a Boeing vice president, will be teaching a course in the Business School this fall related to WTO and international trade in general. This fall, there also will be a seminar series entitled, “The WTO, Greater China, and the USA,” meeting 4 to 5:50 p.m. Thursdays in Kane Hall. The seminar series will address the contentious issue of how the economies of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan interact with trade organizations, and how the countries approach trade policy between themselves and the U.S.

Other events are being discussed, but final arrangements will not be made until key dignitaries and/or delegates have confirmed their attendance at the conference. The WTO Working Group would like to receive information about other scheduled events connected with the WTO. Please send e-mail to: uwwto@u.washington.edu. Future articles in University Week will describe some of the projects in greater detail.

The Washington Council on International Trade proffered the invitation that is bringing the WTO to Seattle. The arrangements for meeting space, transportation and accommodations are being conducted by the Seattle Host Organization (SHO), which is also is responsible for media relations, education and outreach. The UW has four representatives on the organization’s Education and Outreach Committee: Diane Adachi, director of the center for international affairs and special assistant to the president, along with Kalonji, Fox and Brainard.

The organization is seeking volunteers to help at the WTO conference, especially individuals who are fluent in foreign languages or who have specialized computer skills. A volunteer form is available at the its Web site, http://www.wtoseattle.org/.

Bob Roseth, News & Information