Rushford Report | Archives: 12-2001

It is time for the annual Protectionist Pig of the Year award. Admittedly, name calling is in poor taste. But the dubious prize is intended to make a serious point about people who never seem to be held accountable in the press.

To be a Pig of the Year one has to be willing not only to hurt people, but also get away with it in the press. It helps if one is willing to put self-interest ahead of country.

This year, there are three winners.

Washington trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West VA) win the Pig award on behalf of the U.S. steel lobby. The steel guys share the Pig with textile lobbyist Carlos Moore.

Lighthizer began 2001 with a successful effort to trash Thelma Askey’s renomination to the International Trade Commission. Translated, his objection was that here was an honest woman who would actually vote the law instead of taking dives for the steel guys.

Soon thereafter, Lighthizer went on to attack the integrity of jurists who had ruled against his domestic steel clients in WTO dispute-resolution panels. Lighthizer even went so far as to call into question the United States’ willingness to honor its (binding) promises to comply with the rulings of WTO panels, at least when they offend the U.S. steel lobby. And after Sept. 11, Lighthizer was one of the Washington lawyers who filed antidumping cases against major U.S. trading partners and NATO coalition allies.

Rockefeller did much the same. He questioned the patriotism of Stanford University’s Anne Krueger, one of America’s most respected trade economists. Krueger had been tapped by George W. Bush for a slot on the Council of Economic Advisers. The thought of a respected, mainstream economist — particularly a woman with a backbone who could not be flim-flammed by the steel lobby — providing advice to the president was too much for Rockefeller. Bush avoided a fight by naming Krueger instead as the number two official at the International Monetary Fund.

Rockefeller reacted to Sept. 11 by linking steel protectionism to a national security need to curb imports. He refused to comment on the fact that 40 percent of the structural steel in the World Trade Center’s twin towers was Japanese.

Bush also caved to the political demands of the steel lobby that Lighthizer and Rockefeller front for, by agreeing to slap on (as yet unspecified) quotas and tariffs on steel imports. Once again, the interests of the steel lobby were put ahead of the interests of the American economy, which needs imported steel.

Carlos Moore, top lobbyist of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute and a long-time favorite of Rushford Report readers, is a repeat Pig. Promptly after Sept. 11, ATMI got busy lobbying for preferential Buy American contracts to supply the U.S. military with clothing. ATMI has also been unwilling to give U.S. coalition partners — even Pakistan! — full access to restricted U.S. clothing and textile markets. The same goes for poor, war-torn Colombia. Sell us cocaine, not clothing, is Moore’s lobby’s message to the drug lords.

If what amounts to war profiteering won’t qualify for a Pig award, what would?

This prize carries a cash value. I will happily pick up the tab for pork ribs at Red, Hot & Blue, should any of the winners care to join me.

Congratulations to the winners. Not everyone could — or would be willing to — accomplish what you have.

Mr. Koonce meets Mr. Zoellick — and quickly exits

As this awful year lurches to an end, at least the U.S. textile lobby — which has been used to getting its way in Washington — suddenly appeared a tad vulnerable.

Kevin Koonce has spent the last four years as chief textile trade advisor to Sen. Jesse Helms. He has worked hard to try to wreck the Africa Growth legislation, and to keep China out of the WTO. An energetic man who holds a law degree from the Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, Koonce has been regarded as the American Textile Manufacturers Institute’s most effective advocate on the Hill.

Accordingly, Koonce was the last man who would be expected to end up working for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. Zoellick is perhaps the most dedicated free trade advocate in the federal government and a man who makes no secret of his distaste for protectionist U.S. quotas on foreign clothing. But apparently after being pestered by Helms for months, Zoellick relented. The USTR announced on November 2 that Koonce would become his “Special Textile Negotiator.” Zoellick’s press release even fibbed that “Koonce will play a critical role in working with America’s textile and apparel industries to expand overseas market access.”

But Zoellick — who prides himself on his ability to be abrasive when necessary, and sometimes when not — let it be known that he would keep histextile man on a tight rein.

Seems that Koonce could stomach Zoellick for only so long — about two weeks, it turned out. In mid-November Koonce resigned. “Personal reasons,” says a USTR spokesman who was unwilling to cite even one.

But Washington lobbyists who work the free trade side of the street aren’t congratulating themselves that at least one fox is out of the chicken coop. Who knows, they say, Koonce might go back to Helms’ office and keep on making their lives miserable, as well as Zoellick’s.

Moreover, this doesn’t mean that U.S. textile policy has suddenly become enlightened.

Undersecretary of Commerce Grant Aldonis, who oversees the bureaucracy that administers textile quotas, seems to be filling Koonce’s void. Usually, the USTR, not Commerce, takes the lead role on textile negotiations. But Aldonis, a former Senate FinanceCommittee aide, spent much of last month stonewalling Pakistan’s desires to sell Americans more pillow cases, sheets, and gloves.

Many would find such work distasteful, on grounds that if any poor country deserves a break right now, it is Pakistan.

Fair trade coffee activists to Procter & Gamble:
“Let’s kick your can”

Last month, I wrote extensively about the kick-ass San Francisco “human rights” non-profit pressure group, Global Exchange. This is an anti-U.S., anti-Israel outfit that admires human rights as practiced by the likes of Fidel Castro, and Yassir Arafat’s Palestinians. After Sept. 11, Global Exchange saw no evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the atrocities. Global Exchange helped trash Seattle during the 1999 WTO ministerial — and then went on to boast that it had pressured the Seattle-based Starbucks into carrying “fair-trade” coffee.

When I recently spent some time in Guatemala, I learned that Starbucks’ famous Guatemala Antigua coffee was less expensive and better quality than fair-trade coffee — and also that Starbucks’ workers were treated just as decently as their counterparts in fair-trade farm co-ops.

Global Exchange now is busy demonizing Procter & Gamble’s Folgers Coffee. “KICK THE CAN!!” shouts a flier announcing a “Nationwide Day of Action Against Folgers” on December 15. Global Exchange asserts that P&G is behind “prob-lems such as malnutrition in Nicaragua, rural unrest in Mexi-co, and increased drug cultivation in Colombia.” [I tried to call P&G’s Vice President for Malnu-trition, Increased Drug Cultiva-tion, and Rural Unrest, but was unable to find such a person.]

P&G has been refusing to knuckle under.

Perhaps the most revealing reaction to this comes from Paul Rice, the executive director of the Oakland-based Transfair. Trans-fair is the non-profit that certifies the “fair trade” label that you see in retail outlets like Starbucks. Rice likes to be portrayed in the press as being an entrepreneur, not an activist. Rice doesn’t like to talk about Transfair’s close rela-tionship with Global Exchange. He wants people to disassociate Transfair from the rowdies.

Global Exchange, Rice told me in October, was “an industry butt kicker.” Rice insisted that “we don’t share agreement with tactics or strategy or any group that does negative campaigning.” But in the next breath, Rice said it had to be a “lie” that the Star-bucks workers I saw in Guatemala were treated decently. And he refused to disassociate himself with Global Exchange’s extreme politics. Rice and Global Exchange hold the fringe view that there are two types of coffee: “fair-trade,” and “sweatshop.”

The bottom line: Transfair needs Global Exchange. If Global Exchange’s muscle persuades P&G to carry fair-trade coffee, Transfair will collect 10 cents a pound from roasters.

You don’t have to take my word for this.

When I sent an e-mail asking Rice if he agreed with Global Exchange’s demonization of P&G, he sent this reply:

“At a time when family farm-ers are struggling to put food on the table and keep their kids in school, the industry-farmer-con-sumer partnership that TransFair has brokered is making a real dif-ference in the lives of millions.”

He added, “I would humbly suggest that your reporting would have more relevance and more credibility if you focused on the real story here.”