Remarks of Rhoda Karpatkin

Rhoda Karpatkin
President, US Consumers Union

The participants in the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue return to Washington for our third meeting with high expectations. We have come a long way from our first stormy meeting here in 1998. Our steering committee and working groups are organized. We've developed consensus policy positions on important consumer issues, and we've communicated them to our governments and to the WTO.

This has been hard to do, and in some respects, we need to be better organized. But we've achieved a lot, not the least of which are the good working relationships that have developed among consumer groups that are sometimes affected by cultural and organizational differences.

From our point of view, the timing is good for this meeting. It's not only that the new millennium brings a sense of hope and freshness to many things. It's that in the post-Seattle era, there is an opportunity for changed approaches, and an optimist can possibly detect that we're seeing some of that on the part of our governments.

In the US-EU Summit in Washington in December, the governments released a joint statement on the WTO that said plainly that they "need to take full account of the lessons of Seattle". They detailed specific goals that sound very similar to parts of the TACD agenda: more transparency, improved public access and enhanced consultation procedures with civil society, and review of WTO dispute settlement procedures. They paid particular attention to the needs of developing countries, within the WTO and with respect to existing trade agreements.

They also were particularly attentive to the concerns of civil society. Future priorities included "new steps to address the full range of issues of concern in biotechnology...with input from civil society". They committed to government support for the dialogues, and "a fair and equal approach to the handling of the dialogues". They noted that dialogue recommendations would receive careful consideration, and stressed the "value which their contributions could make to our early warning effort."

I've gone into this in some detail because it may justify a feeling of optimism. It should be the marching orders for the various government departments with whom we try to work. It sounds like an overdue note of reality brought on by the events in Seattle.

That would certainly be sensible and welcome. And it's necessary. It's too easy - and a mistake - for government and corporate officials to dismiss what happened in Seattle as the ranting of zealots bent on destroying property and world order. Or to dismiss it as the momentary coming together of disparate groups with disparate agendas who were unlikely to ever come together again. Or to take comfort in the fact that there are some differences in the agendas of the various labor, environmental and consumer groups, or that there are differences between some civil society goals and the views of governments in some developing nations.

A wiser approach would recognize the importance the December summit placed on the usefulness civil society organizations have in what the statement called "early warning efforts". Some of us - and I include myself - indeed warned our government officials that their failed global trade policies and processes would result in an outpouring of frustration and protest in Seattle. We were ignored. Ignored also were the early warnings by consumer groups in the U.S. about consumer concerns over genetically modified foods.

A wiser approach would heed the analysis of The Economist. In its December 11 analysis of what it described as a "setback for freer trade and a boost for critics of globalization", The Economist noted that "citizens' groups are increasingly powerful at the corporate, national and international level."

And a wiser approach would take note - as The Economist did - of the transforming effect the Internet has had in the policy making process. Information and expertise can flow among civil society groups with speed that is truly revolutionary. Coalitions can be built online without the costs of telephones and meetings. Partnerships between groups with different agendas, or from countries with different stages of development, can be built more easily, more quickly, and more effectively. The Economist conclusion is inevitable: "a new kind of actor is claiming, loudly, a seat at the table".

That seat at the table is what this meeting is about. That's what the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue was about. That's what Seattle was about. And that was what the references to civil society at the December Summit should have been about, and what the presence of the governments of the US and the EU here today must mean.

Globalization may be inevitable, but trade policy-making that takes only corporate desires into account, is not. It can no longer be done. Future Seattles cannot be averted by bigger barricades in the streets or by barricades in the minds of government or business officials.

Let us here help usher in the era when civil society needs - and for our meeting that means consumer needs - are heard, respected, and reflected in policy outcomes. Everyone occupying a seat at the table must be nourished, and that means the food must be divided differently. Those who have gotten used to gorging themselves must accept that fact. Our governments' role -admittedly difficult- is to make that happen.

I hope that can be the guiding spirit for this meeting. Our dialogues must assure that the governments, in shaping a new global trade policy, acknowledge the need for consumer protection measures, environmental protections, core labor rights, and, in the developing countries, access to the benefits of global trade and protection from its ravages. We know our two governments do not have the power to solve all the problems that globalization has brought over time. But we also know that those problems can never be solved by turning a deaf ear to the policies we advocate in the consumer interest, or by paying lip service to the idea of dialogue without delivering any tangible outcomes.

Let's make this meeting the beginning point of a new dialogue, one whose goal is a trade policy that maximizes health, safety and environmental protections; that recognizes the importance of core labor standards; and that advances society's interest in competition in the market place. Let's agree that there can be meaningful benefits to consumers and corporations alike in promoting such a trade policy. That means a trade policy that seeks to achieve the welfare of the whole society.

For sure, we few can't solve all the problems in three days. But we can make progress on an extremely important piece of the problem - the consumer protection piece. This work has taken on a new urgency. Consumers want to work with their governments to make the progress we need, and we want our governments to work with us, so that we can see that this new era has produced a new dialogue with new results.

Thank you.