lost in the supermarket
Super busy this week with the usual cocktail of work and etcetras etcetras, but with a twist: a brand new internship (wish me luck and success, Labrateers).
In the meantime, take a look at this missive via the hardest workin' non-profit in Dee Cee, Public Citizen. Makes me long for the Way We Were, when Thomas Friedman and the prospect of having everything we have and are sold off to a German-American multinational were the only things we needed to worry about. Well, those things, and global warming.
Big Box Backlash: Local Control Over Land Use Threatened by WTO
Public Citizen Briefing Paper Reveals Push by Big Box Retailers to Use Trade Rules to Undermine Local Zoning and Other LandUse Laws
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A controversial World Trade Organization (WTO) services agreement that will be discussed at this week’s WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong poses a serious threat to state and local authority over land use policy, according to a briefing paper released today by Public Citizen.
Public Citizen released the paper, Big Box Backlash:The Stealth Campaign at the World Trade Organization to Pre-empt Local Control Over Land Use, as trade negotiators flew to Hong Kong in a last-ditch effort to revive stalled WTO talks. The briefing paper exposes how big box retailers such as Wal-Mart are pushing for new provisions in the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) that could further undermine local zoning and other land use and development policies. The briefing paper is available here.
“This briefing paper points out that, unlike many European and Asian nations, U.S. trade negotiators failed to safeguard local land use laws from the existing WTO services agreement, much in the same way that they failed to protect state gambling laws from the GATS,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, referring to a recent WTO ruling against U.S. gambling laws. “Rather than paring back our commitments under the GATS to protect state sovereignty and the right to regulate as a local governing entity, the Bush administration is hoping for an agreement in Hong Kong that would deliver a vast expansion of the GATS, including into areas largely regulated by states, such as higher education.”
In 1994, the United States committed retail and wholesale distribution, as well as the hotel and restaurant sectors, to the terms of the GATS, one of 17 Uruguay Round agreements enforced by the Geneva-based WTO. The GATS expansive “market access” rules are geared toward facilitating the entry of foreign service providers into the U.S. market by incorporation or acquisition of U.S. firms. These GATS rules forbid limits on the number of services suppliers, as well as measures that would reduce the value of a service transaction or limit the number of employees. Policies containing economic needs tests, like that in the city of Los Angeles for very large retail operations, are explicitly forbidden.
Unless the United States takes action to fix this problem in the current round of negotiations, local governments could see challenges to state and local land use laws brought before WTO tribunals, which are empowered to authorize trade sanctions against countries that refuse to conform their domestic policies to WTO dictates. Across the country, state and local officials are working to put laws in place to protect their communities, their environment, their wage base and tax dollars by putting land use limits on “big box” retailers, as well as retail chains and other development projects they deem destructive to the community or the environment or out of step with local needs and planning.
Among the local laws threatened by GATS rules are those that impose:
** size and height restrictions on big box stores;
** limits on hours of operation;
** economic needs tests before stores can be approved; and
** limits on development to protect the environment or protect historic and cultural sites.
** No state or local group has yet recognized the threat posed to land use laws and local sovereignty by the WTO’s one-size-fits-all rules for service firms. One group that has recognized this threat is major retail firms.
**snip**
Indeed, Wal-Mart, in a May 1, 2002, submission to the U.S. Trade Representative, asked that Bush administration trade negotiators press countries to remove “any size limitations on individual stores” and “geographic limitations on store locations” in member countries. Similarly, at a Sept. 12, 2002, conference on the GATS organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a retail industry representative identified IKEA (the Swedish furniture retailer) and Royal Ahold (the Netherlands-based owner of the Stop & Shop and Giant Food chains in the United States) as among the globalized companies facing problems with local land use policies. The representative identified regulations related to the “size and location of stores” as a specific trade barrier.
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