Environmental activists promise to be in Seattle climbing buildings, hanging banners and generally making themselves conspicuous when some 135 foreign trade ministers will be here, talking business. The agreement the greens oppose, which could be on the table at that meeting, would reduce tariffs on paper and wood products to zero. Opponents say free trade will increase consumption of wood and paper in countries that now have high prices, and thus increase the harvest in the wood-exporting nations such as the United States. The U.S. Trade Representative's office in Washington, D.C., says tariffs hurt efficient producers here. The U.S. forest industry has been arguing for zero tariffs for about 10 years.
Tariffs are the immediate question, but other issues separate the two sides.
The U.S. Trade Representative argues that once science is abandoned, no one can tell which precautions are reasonable and which are not. Another issue is product standards. Environmentalists want local discretion in setting standards, especially in such matters as percentage of recycled content. Dan Seligman, director of trade policy for the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C., says the proposed agreement, which was patterned after the North American Free Trade Agreement, would allow investors to sue governments that devalued their property through regulation. In the Pacific Northwest, he suggested, a foreign investor in forest land might sue the U.S. government for regulations designed to protect salmon habitat.