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Washington Post: Boston's Stand on



Subject: Washington Post: Boston's Stand on Human Rights

Boston's Stand on Human Rights

By Fred Hiatt

Monday, August 25, 1997; Page A19
The Washington Post 

Is the European Union about to slap economic sanctions on the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts? It may come to that, in a case that helps explain this
nation's ambivalence about its place in a globalizing economy -- an
ambivalence that will come to the fore in Washington next month, when
President Clinton seeks expanded trade negotiating powers from Congress.

This particular story begins on the other side of this interconnected
globe, in the beautiful but sad Asian land of Burma. The narco-thug junta
of military bullies who misrule that nation may qualify, against stiff
competition, as the world's most odious regime. By the same token, the
woman who should be Burma's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi -- whose party won an
election seven years ago but never was permitted to take office and who has
been under house arrest pretty much ever since -- is unsurpassed in
courage, dignity and determination.

The contrast hasn't gone unnoticed. A grass-roots movement in this country
has persuaded a dozen cities, including San Francisco and New York, and one
state -- Massachusetts -- to adopt economic sanctions of their own. Modeled
explicitly on laws designed to help Nelson Mandela and the South African
anti-apartheid movement, the Massachusetts law bars any state procurement
from companies doing business in Burma. As in the South Africa case, the
law is having an effect; supporters claim that Apple Computer, PepsiCo,
Eastman Kodak and other major firms have pulled out of Burma rather than
risk losses in the United States.

But wait. While Massachusetts was debating the Burma bill, the United
States (in 1994) joined the World Trade Organization, a new Geneva-based
body intended to promote fair, universal rules of commerce. As part of the
package, Congress signed on to an international code on government
procurement, to which most states (but no cities) voluntarily acceded. In
so doing, they promised to award contracts based solely on merit, not on
extraneous political or cultural factors.

Aha! said the European Union last June (joined by Japan a month later):
Massachusetts's Burma law is in clear violation. Following WTO procedure,
the Europeans requested "consultations" and may now demand a three-judge
panel to hear their case. If it wins, the WTO would demand a change in the
Massachusetts law or, as an alternative, economic compensation -- perhaps
targeted, if possible, at the Bay State.

Why would the Europeans hand Burma's thugs this kind of moral support,
especially when the European Parliament claims to back Burma's democrats?
Many Europeans are fed up with what they see as America's growing habit of
seeking to impose its own foreign policy by punishing European companies
that do business in Iran, Libya, Cuba, Burma or elsewhere. Because they
couldn't stop Congress from acting this way, they're picking on
Massachusetts, kicking Aung San Suu Kyi along the way.

The administration says it will defend the Massachusetts law. As he asks
Congress for wider authority to shape new trade agreements, the last thing
Clinton wants is confirmation that the WTO impinges on local sovereignty.

But while they're defending the Massachusetts law, administration officials
haven't gone so far as to label it defensible. In the long run, some will
admit privately, they don't think it would be so bad if states and cities
were nudged out of the foreign-policy business. And they point to the
advantages U.S. firms gain from an international code on procurement,
suggesting it's worth giving up something along the way. To the
administration, in fact, and to defenders of the globalizing trade regime
in general, the WTO not only can help U.S. multinationals sell more, but
can also help spread the American way throughout the world: the rule of
law, the sanctity of contract, the opportunity for anyone to compete based
on hard work and quality, rather than personal connection or corruption.
Trade talks these days focus less and less on tariffs and quotas and more
on how societies organize themselves -- in environmental or copyright law,
health and safety standards, local zoning and national cultural protection.

WTO critics on both the left and the right see danger precisely in that
drive toward uniformity. They don't want to cede local control on such
basic issues, especially when they believe the benefits flow mostly to
large corporations.

For Michael Shuman, a lawyer at the Institute for Policy Studies, the
Massachusetts law on Burma is a case in point. The U.S. Constitution may
assign foreign-policy powers to Washington, but states and local
governments always have nibbled at the edges, he says. "A large number of
voices on foreign policy helps democratize the process," he says, adding
"creativity and diversity."

In truth, the WTO can't force Massachusetts to change its law, nor can it
force Washington to make Massachusetts back down, as trade lawyer Alan
Wolff points out. The WTO can only hold the United States to what it agreed
to and extract a price if our country falls short -- exactly as the United
States has demanded of many other countries.

But the U.S. trade representative, trying to appease the Europeans, already
has pressed other states not to follow the Massachusetts example. And some
in Massachusetts aren't pleased about the pressure.

If the WTO had been around 10 years ago, argues Burma activist Simon
Billenness, "Nelson Mandela might still be in jail today." He doesn't think
the Massachusetts legislature will back down.

"Here in Boston," Billenness says, "there's a certain tradition of not
letting European bureaucrats impinge on our decisions regarding taxes and
spending."

The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. 

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company