Any right-minded person believes that core labour standards should be established and maintained. But it is poverty that creates bad labour conditions, where such abuses as child labour can flourish. The cure for poverty is economic growth and job creation. Trade sanctions would have the opposite effect, for they effectively deny markets to an offending country, weaken its economy and lower its living standards. Desperately poor rural workers in developing countries, the sort of people the activists in Seattle purported to defend, will certainly not benefit from such measures.
Trade sanctions can only obstruct development and increase poverty.
Indeed, the people in developing countries generally insist on higher standards, once they get the chance to do so. The movement to keep trade negotiations separate from environmental or labour policies is not confined to business but is supported by the overwhelming majority of the 135 WTO member governments. In a joint statement, we agreed that the multilateral trading system should not be called upon to deal with such non-trade issues as human rights, labour and environmental standards. The place for addressing these issues is the UN and its appropriate agencies. The most productive way forward is to enhance the authority, effectiveness and the resource base of these UN bodies.