space Press Releases, News Stories

by Robert McClure, Seattle Post Intelligencer

Hogwash, replied free-trade advocates. International trade regulations afford the United States enough leeway to allow a ban on imports of hazardous waste, they contended.

In a pattern likely to be replayed more than once before the World Trade Organization meets in Seattle later this month, the activists skewered what they called anti-democratic, anti-environmental principles by which the WTO settles trade disputes.

Under WTO agreements providing for the free movement of goods and services, hazardous waste could be forced on the United States, according to reports released by the Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange and the Seattle office of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.

"Toxic waste is not a 'good' that should be subject to trade rules," said Jim Puckett of the Environmental Exchange at a press conference to release the reports.

Puckett cited the case of a load of waste that was set to be shipped from Taiwan through the Port of Tacoma last summer.

The waste, which had sickened people and caused a panic and a riot when it was indiscriminately dumped near a Cambodian port, was intended for shipment to a facility in Idaho that is licensed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to process and store hazardous waste.

But Puckett, the EPA and dock workers prevailed upon the shippers to hold up the first in what was supposed to be a series of shipments of the waste through Tacoma.

At the time, an EPA spokesman said, "It doesn't matter if it's from Tukwila, Toledo or Taiwan. . . . There's nothing that prevents U.S. (waste) companies from importing waste that is consistent with (U.S. law) . . . since there is no difference between foreign waste and domestic waste."

However, the importing company would have to prove the waste could be safely shipped and disposed of.

Had the United States tried to turn back the waste, its hand would have been weakened by U.S. refusal to join an international treaty governing hazardous waste shipments.

The treaty, known as the Basel Convention, calls for disposal of toxic waste in the country of origin whenever possible.

Under WTO rules, a country must treat foreign and domestic goods equally. Therefore, the United States would be unable to prohibit the importation of toxic waste, the environmentalists charged.

If the U.S. were to try to keep out a shipment of waste, they said, the action could be challenged in a WTO dispute, which would be decided by three officials from neutral countries. Often these officials are trade lawyers with no experience in environmental matters, the activists said.

"The threat that the WTO poses to health and the environment is not a hypothetical threat," said Carol Dansereau of the Washington Toxics Coalition.

Defenders of free trade attacked the charges as speculative at best.

"That's just scare tactics," said University of Washington economist Paul Heyne. "These guys come up with scenarios that are so unlikely."

The basic rule at the WTO is that a country must treat foreign goods and domestic goods equally. The WTO seeks to eradicate protectionism, in which a government tries to favor domestic producers over foreign ones.

"If the U.S. has laws on disposal of toxic materials and applies those in a non-discriminatory manner, I don't think it would be subject to WTO sanctions," said Bill Bryant, a principal in a Seattle firm that aids companies involved in international trade.

"Somebody could bring a case, but I don't think it's at all clear . . . the country bringing the case would win."

He cited Article XX of the WTO rules, which allows countries to prohibit goods from being imported when "necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health."

The rules also say that Article XX cannot be used as in a backhanded way as "arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination" -- as undercover protectionism, in other words.

"If the United States has somebody who's in the business of treating hazardous waste, why shouldn't they be allowed to import hazardous waste, which is an input in their business?" said Heyne, the UW economist.

The environmentalists said the burden of proving a traded good is safe should fall to the country that wants to export it. But Heyne backed the current WTO rules, which presume a good is safe and must be allowed unless the country challenging it can prove otherwise.

"What the WTO is trying to do, and is supposed to do, is prevent countries from using the environment and other legitimate issues as cover for protectionism," Heyne said. "That means they have to look behind the claims that governments make."

Even free-traders, however, acknowledge that no mechanism has been worked out deal with conflicts between WTO rules and other international treaties such as the Basel Convention.

U.S. Undersecretary for Global Affairs Frank Loy said in a visit to Seattle last month that the WTO will have to wrestle with these conflicts, but that the Clinton administration is not planning to push that onto the agenda when the WTO meets here Nov. 30-Dec. 2.

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P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattle-pi.com