[PEN-L:36303] GATS

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

[regulating governments' ability to regulate commerce]

Saturday, March 29, 2003

Global trade talks spark local fears
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON -- The desire of corporate America to dismantle global trade
barriers in service industries such as banking and telecommunications
could run into major opposition from an unlikely source -- state and city
governments.

Local officials are starting to raise concerns that the Bush
administration will negotiate away their flexibility to regulate a wide
swath of service providers from banks and lawyers to local water and sewer
companies.

Those worries have been fueled by a massive 400-page document that the
office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick mailed out to state
government officials in January providing them with a summary of the
requests various countries were making of the United States in the trade
liberalization negotiations.

That document summarized for each of the 50 states and the District of
Columbia the types of laws and regulations that needed to be changed to
meet requests being made by other nations involved in the talks.

Those negotiations are part of a new round of global trade talks being
conducted by the 144 member countries in the World Trade Organization,
which were launched in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar.

The various requests seek to remove a number of special restrictions that
now apply to foreigners in such areas as the ownership of banks, insurance
companies and various utilities, including telephone companies and firms
supplying water and sewer services.

Many developing countries are seeking to make it easier for their
residents to come to the United States to work in a variety of regulated
fields from architecture to medicine, work that is now barred in many
cases by state licensing requirements.

All of these requests will be subject to lengthy negotiations in coming
months in Geneva, where the trade talks are continuing at WTO
headquarters. While the talks are not scheduled to wrap up until Jan. 1,
2005, critics charge that the Bush administration has failed to keep state
and local government officials informed about the progress.

"This really represents an egregious attack on democracy that the basic
regulatory policies of the 50 states could be undone by secret
negotiations in Geneva," said Lori Wallach, director of advocacy group
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

Administration officials said the concerns being raised at the state level
are unjustified and many of the worries of state officials would be put to
rest on Monday, when Zoellick will unveil the administration's opening
offer for lowering trade barriers. Officials said the administration will
include none of the demands that have most worried state officials.