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Because of the length of this posting it is on 3 pages
Jan.
2003
Edition
41
[ Click here for December 2002 post ]
This is where we hope to keep you thinking. The site does not focus on diversionary minutia. You get enough of that incessant spin coming from mainstream media.
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is a think tank dedicated to "promoting public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace." It was founded in 1977 by petroleum millionaire and libertarian Charles Koch and Edward Crane of the Alliance Capital Management.
The Cato Institute promoted deregulation, private property, and privatization by publishing books, policy analyses, journals, articles, and radio programs on education, drugs, trade, immigration, and foreign policy, and the environment. Cato recently published a study titled How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands which proposed auctioning off all public lands over the next 20 to 40 years. The report was co-authored by the executive director of the Political Economy Research Center, Terry Anderson, who serves as an unofficial adviser on natural resource issues to presidential candidate George W. Bush.
Cato estimates that government regulation costs hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps 10 percent of the total gross domestic product. Cato consistently attacks government regulation and intervention, whether it be in the form of taxes or social welfare. Cato's ideological consistency has led it to publish exposes of government subsidies of corporations. Cato estimated that tax breaks and other subsidies cost almost as much as social welfare programs, and pointed out that subsidies corrupted both democracy and business, that they foster an "incestuous relationship" between government and industry, that they strain the federal budget, and are "anti-consumer, anti-capitalist, and unconstitutional." Cato identified more than 100 government subsidies that cost $85 billion in 1985, and singled out Archer Daniels Midland as a particular recipient of wasteful subsidies.
Cato sponsors an annual monetary conference, which has been attended by Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan and others from the regional Federal reserve Banks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, International Monetary Fund first deputy managing director Stanley Fischer, and Harvard professor Jeffrey Sachs, author of "shock therapy" economic restructuring programs.
Cato's Project on Global Economic Liberty pushes privatization, deregulation, and globalization, and says that "unilateral liberalization" is the most effective way to achieve economic growth. A new Cato book, Global Fortune: The Stumble and Rise of World Capitalism says "the critics of economic globalization are wrong. Capitalism has created a century of unprecedented prosperity and its spread is necessary to lift the world's poor out of poverty... What the world needs is more market reform, not a retreat from globalization."
Cato opposes laws discriminating against gays. It promotes the legalization of drugs, and opposes censorship of pornography. Cato's opposition to government intervention led it to oppose U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf and Bosnia. But libertarian positions on various issues does not mean that the Cato Institute does not support corporate power. In the absence of civil authority, eliminating government regulation and government programs simply means that corporate power is unchecked.
The privatization of social security which Cato favors would mean a huge windfall for the stock market and the investment banks managing corporate stock and bond portfolios (Cato's study of Social Security privatization has been supported by funding from insurance company AIG, which manages privatized retirement systems).
Cato applauds the recent "reform" of welfare in the U.S., but its Facilitating Fraud: How SSDI Gives Benefits to the Able Bodied report "explains how the federal government is handing out Social Security disability payments to individuals who are not disabled and have no right to receive them."
Cato claims government recycling programs are encouraging waste, that the states should set their own pollution standards, and that Superfund and other toxic waste laws should be repealed.
Cato "adjunct scholar" Steven Milloy was the executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) in 1997 and 1998. TASSC membership includes more than 400 agricultural, manufacturing, oil, dairy, timber, paper and mining corporations and associations, including 3M, Amoco, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Exxon, General Motors, Lorillard Tobacco, the Louisiana Chemical Association, the National Pest Control Association, Occidental Petroleum, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corp., and W.R. Grace & Co-as well as the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Cato Institute has published two of Milloy's books, Science Without Sense and Silencing Science. Milloy newspaper columns, which published by major corporate media, attack scientists studying the global climate change, accuse the Consumers Union of being biased towards environmental protection, and dismiss criticism of biotechnology as "little myths."
In 1998, Dick Cheney, former U.S. Defense Secretary and chairman of the petrochemical and military construction corporation Halliburton, told a Cato audience what they wanted to hear: that U.S. military and human rights sanctions against foreign governments were counterproductive because they affected the profits of U.S. corporations.
Cato employs 75 staff and has 55 adjunct scholars and 14 fellows, "many of whom are among the country's leading advocates of free markets and limited government."
Cato's budget was $12 million in 1998 and $13 million in 1999. Most of the funding comes from conservative foundations such as Sarah Scaife and John M. Olin.
Meetings
Unless otherwise noted, all events are held at Cato's Washington DC headquarters.
Cato Policy Forum on Welfare, Work, and Four Years of Change: Where Do We Go from Here? Aug 22, 2000.
Americans working for free enterprise and limited government"
Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) was founded in 1984 by libertarians David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, who have also founded other think tanks such as the Cato Institute. CSE received almost $5 million from various Koch foundations between 1986 and 1990, and David Koch and several Koch Industries employees serve as directors of CSE and the CSE Foundation.
Although CSE has recently received its funding from the tobacco and sugar industries and from major corporations such as General Electric (see chart below), CSE describes itself as "hundreds of thousands of grassroots citizens dedicated to (1) free markets and limited government, and (2) the highest level of personal involvement in public policy activism. Through recruitment, training, and political participation, CSE has become an army of activists... [who] continuously recruit, educate, and enable new members to participate effectively in public policy debates. CSE activists serve as local leaders who recruit others to join the fight for free-market policies." CSE has local chapters in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, New, Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
Directors of CSE and CSE Foundation:
Most of CSE's income ($4 million in 1991, over $15 million in 1998) comes from corporations and corporate foundations.
| Funder |
Amount |
Year |
Purpose |
| General Electric |
$500,000 |
1998 |
|
| Publix Super Markets |
$500,000 |
1998 |
|
| U.S. Sugar Corp. |
$280,000 |
1998 |
fight Everglades restoration |
| Florida Crystals Corp. |
$280,000 |
1998 |
fight Everglades restoration |
| Emerson Electric |
$200,000 |
1998 |
|
| AlliedSignal |
$200,000 |
1998 |
|
| Johnson & Johnson |
$200,000 |
1998 |
|
| Sugar Cane Growers Coop of Florida |
$140,000 |
1998 |
fight Everglades restoration |
| Hertz |
$25,000 |
1998 |
tort reform |
| DaimlerChrysler |
$25,000 |
1998 |
tort reform |
| Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group |
$10,000 |
1998 |
tort reform |
| Huizenga Holdings |
$75,000 |
1998 |
tort reform |
| Exxon |
$175,000 |
? |
global climate issues |
| U.S. West |
$1,000,000 |
? |
telephone deregulation |
| Philip Morris |
$1,000,000 |
? |
oppose cigarette taxes |
| Microsoft |
$380,000 |
? |
limit federal budget for antitrust |
| Sarah Scaife Foundation |
$200,000 |
1999 |
|
| John M. Olin Foundation |
$270,000 |
1997-1999 |
for the work of the organization and a fellowship for James C. Miller III |
| Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundations |
$4,800,000 |
1986-1990 |
founders and regular funders |
Conference Board
The mission of the Conference Board is to be a "non-profit non-advocacy organization ... to improve the business enterprise system and to enhance the contribution of business to society."
The National Industrial Conference Board was "born out of a crisis in industry in 1916" when "declining public confidence in business and rising labor unrest had become severe threats to economic growth and stability" and a "bubbling political/industrial cauldron teemed with anarchists, socialists, progressives, liberals, conservatives, and splinter groups of all shades." The Board sought to "reduce tension between capital and labor and end the mayhem that was crippling industrial development." As a federation of eleven of the nation's most powerful industry associations, the Board "concluded that the time had arrived for an entirely new type of organization. Not another trade association. Not a propaganda machine. But a respected, not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization that would bring leaders together to find solutions to common problems and objectively examine major issues having an impact on business and society."
The Board's articulation of a broad public interest function is contradicted by its first committee, which was dedicated to publicity, not research, and by one the founders' minutes of an early meeting, which included the following: "The conference was called with the object of discussing constructively and comprehensively the causes of the increasing strife between employers and their employees and the effect of the rapidly multiplying amount of restrictive labor and social legislation on the conduct of business."
The focus on controlling regulation has been evident throughout the Board's history. At first the Board produced studies and recommendations for "industrial progress," which emphasized labor reform, but soon created committees on anti-trust legislation, taxation, public finance, and international issues. The Board currently works on government relations, tax reform, political action committees, and reform of social security and pension systems.
The Conference Board has been addressed by standing U.S. Presidents, including Kennedy, Johnson, and Ford, as well as by former or future Presidents Taft, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. Bill Clinton attended the 1991 meeting before announcing his candidacy for U.S. President.
A measure of the Board's influence is seen in U.S. President Johnson's implementation of Board recommendations for changes in how corporate tax depreciation was calculated. For example, the resulting changes to the tax code in 1965 alone resulted in $700 million in tax breaks to corporations.
The Board also helped mobilize for Word War I, by offering the Wilson administration "the cooperation and machinery of the Board in facilitating the government's work with the manufacturers of the country." Wilson's cabinet-level Council on National Defense responded by requesting Board assistance in assessing the labor situation and in promoting uninterrupted production of war materials. The Board advised that strikes and lockouts posed the greatest threat, and Wilson appointed Board members to the agency which set out the government's war-time labor policies.
After World War II, the President's Committee for Financing Foreign Trade, another corporate-dominated advisory board, asked the Conference Board to analyze the obstacles to making foreign investments.
In the 1950's, after "World War II had introduced humanity to the atom and business quickly saw potential for its peaceful application," the Conference Board held annual conferences to promote nuclear energy among industry and government agencies.
Such boosterism continues. In 1991, the Conference Board held a North American Free Trade Forum in Acapulco, Mexico, attended by business leaders and the chief trade officials from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
The Conference Board bills itself as "the leading business membership and research organization where you can gain cross-industry knowledge and share experiences & best practices with executives from more than 3,000 organizations in 67 countries. A not-for-profit, non-advocacy organization, The Conference Board provides objective business knowledge through the Consumer Confidence Index and the Leading Economic Indicators and our research, conferences, centers, and councils."
The Conference Board claims it is not a lobbying organization, just "the world's leading business membership and research organization." "Does The Conference Board lobby on any issues? No. The Conference Board is a non-partisan, non-advocacy organization." However, the Conference Board's Council of Public Affairs Executives (CPAE) sponsors meetings on "corporate public affairs and government relations" to provide a forum for corporate public affairs officers to "examine issues as they relate to their company's policies and procedures." Recent issues discussed included the politics of the federal budget surplus, the evolving politics of health care, the implications of tax reform, corporate PACs in a changing political environment, and Social Security and pension reform-all specific legislative issues on which millions are being spent to lobby elected officials.
The CPAE meets twice a year in Washington, DC. Attendance is restricted to the corporate public affairs officers. The 35 CPAE members pay annual membership dues of $3,000. Companies represented at recent meetings include Microsoft, Kmart, Unilever, Pfizer, Honeywell, General Mills, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Schering-Plough, UNUM, DuPont, UPS, Gannett, Deere & Company, Rolls-Royce, Citgo Petroleum, International Paper, Eastman Kodak, and Warner-Lambert.
Membership & Structure
Members include executives from more than 3,000 corporations from more than 60 nations. More than 150 CEOs address 12,000 meeting participants at the annual meeting. By the early 1990s, the Conference Board's budget exceeded $20 million.
Past chairmen of the Conference Board have included the heads of Westinghouse, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Proctor & Gamble, Standard Oil of California, Republic Steel, Chemical Trust Bank, Bechtel, General Electric, IBM, RCA, General Foods, Goodyear, and 3M. Some of these executives have also served as U.S. Cabinet secretaries or in other governmental or quasi-governmental positions. For example, oil executive Alexander Trowbridge served as Johnson's Secretary of Commerce before leading the Conference Board in the 1970s, and long-time Conference Board president John Sinclair had been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Morris Tabaksblat, chairman of Reed Elsevier, former chairman of Unilever, and the vice-chair of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, is also vice-chair of the Conference Board.
Conference Board trustees include representatives of Bestfoods, Phillips Petroleum, JC
Penney, Excel, Texaco, Martha Stewart Living, Fidelity Management and Research, Goldman Sachs, British Airways, and Unisys.
The Conference Board's Councils are "groups of senior executives who meet regularly to share information, ideas, and insights on relevant business issues. They engage in candid, off-the-record discussions with peers in other companies, industries, and, in some cases, other countries. Each of our more than 100 Councils charts its own course: selecting members, setting meeting agendas, and serving the interests and needs of the group. Only executives in member companies of The Conference Board may participate."
The Conference Board's Centers are "executive forums that bring together management research, publications, councils, and conferences in the areas listed below. They are designed to keep you in front of the latest developments in management strategies and tactics in their areas of responsibility. Only executives in member companies of The Conference Board may participate." The Centers are the Global Center for Performance Excellence, the Global Corporate Governance Research Center, the Information Management Center, and the Townley Global Management Center for Environment, Health and Safety."
The Board opened Canadian offices in the 1950s and European offices in the 1970s, and as part of its effort to "help business in the global marketplace, works with organizations around the world, ranging from the Chambers of Commerce in Thailand and Hong Kong, the Confederation of Indian Industries, the Singapore Trade Development Board, the Irish Management Institute, the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association, the Mexican Business Council for International Affairs, the Conference Board of Canada, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.
Council on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921 by "businessmen, bankers, and lawyers determined to keep the United States engaged in the world" and "to provide insights into international affairs and to develop new ideas for U.S. foreign policy, particularly national security and foreign economic policy. The CFR seeks to "cooperate with the government and all existing agencies and to bring them into constructive accord." The CFR's website claims that it is "is composed of men and women from all walks of international life and from all parts of America" but its membership is largely unchanged from its founders: white, male, and predominantly corporate in background and viewpoint.
During World War II the CFR, with Rockefeller Foundation funding, brought together corporate and media executives, government officials, and academics to strategize the national interests, war aims, and postwar plans of the United States. Five study groups were set up: Economic and Financial, Political, Armaments, Territorial, and Peace Aims, composed of government officials from the White House, the State and Treasury Departments, the Pentagon, and intelligence agencies, Wall Street bankers and attorneys, major industrialists, and selected representatives of the media.
Many of the CFR recommendations, which were kept secret until well after the war, were implemented by U.S. President Roosevelt and his Cabinet departments. The public position of the U.S. government called for freedom, equality, prosperity, and peace, but in private, government officials in the CFR study groups were considering the territories crucial to the U.S. economy in terms of markets and raw materials, and minimally defined the "Grand Area" as the Western Hemisphere, the UK and the remainder of the British Commonwealth and Empire, the Dutch East Indies, China, and Japan-though the ultimate goal would be global economic unification under U.S. leadership.
The CFR study groups analyzed the necessity for an economic recovery plan after the war which would finance the rebuilding of European markets for U.S. exports-which eventually became the Marshall Plan-and laid out plans for postwar institutions under U.S. and British control, including an international monetary fund to stabilize currencies, an international development bank to subsidize and insure corporate investments in undeveloped countries, and a judicial institution to maintain security ("settle disputes") in an age of rising nationalism among newly-independent colonies. In 1944 and 1945 these were established as the IMF, the World Bank, and the United Nations.
You may join the CFR only by invitation, and although the CFR has 3,600 members, they are "nearly all current and former senior U.S. government officials who deal with international matters; renowned scholars; and leaders of business, media, human rights, humanitarian, and other nongovernmental groups" (the current CFR officers and directors are listed in Appendix 7).
The CFR seeks to "find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders and thinkers" by bringing "outstanding younger scholars" onto the Council staff through several fellowships. For example, in the mid-1990s, National Public Radio correspondent Anne Garrels spent two years in Russia as a "fellow" with the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR also has a Fellow for National Security Studies position, which is named after the ultraconservative weapons manufacturer and philanthropist John M. Olin. The CFR conducts study groups and sponsors roundtables, and produces books, articles, and editorial pieces for mainstream newspapers, television, and radio.
In the late 1980s, the CFR, with the support of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, sponsored a Study Group on Privatization which explored the politics of and profit in helping countries around the world accelerate "loosening the ties that bind their enterprises to the apparatus of government." Members of the study group included consultants to the World Bank/IMF, United Nations Development Fund, U.S. Agency for International Development, and other multilateral institutions which promote privatization of public enterprises through foreign "aid," loans, and structural adjustment programs.
Several CFR task forces are established every year to address issues of "current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy." Upon reaching a conclusion, a task force issues a report, and the CFR holds "informative meetings" for CFR members and the press. Recent task force reports included Promoting U.S. Economic Relations with Africa, Financing America's Leadership: Protecting American Interests and Promoting American Values, American National Interests and the United Nations, Lessons of the Mexican Peso Crisis, and Non-Lethal Technologies: Military Options and Technologies.
The Latin America Conference in May 2000 was
addressed by Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and current chairman
of Citigroup.
Lawrence H. Summers, U.S. Secretary of the State ,
and Peter G. Peterson, investment banker and former U.S. Secretary of
Commerce, laid out "The Right Priorities for International Development" in a
meeting in March 2000.
Summers is a popular speaker at CFR, giving his
opinions on "The Trials and Tribulations of a World Economy" (March 1999) and
on "Lessons Learned from Mexico" and "The Importance of the International
Financial Institutions of U.S. International Economic Policy" (February 1997).
Summers and IMF director Michel Camdessus considered "the future international
financial architecture."
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, U.S.
President Bill Clinton, global investor George Soros, and World Bank president
James Wolfensohn discussed the global economy.
U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, U.S.
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluated
future defense policy for CFR audiences.
U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley, Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak, and U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson addressed
business opportunities in the Middle East.
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and Grameen "micro"
bank founder Muhammad Yunus expanded on their recent books.
Meetings
The CFR holds an annual National Conference, and seminars based on study groups and independent task forces in key cities around the country.
European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT)
Founded in 1983 by 17 industrialists led by Pehr Gyllenhammar of Volvo and two European Commissioners, the purpose of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) is to unify Europe under one economic system, which will "strengthen Europe's economy and improve its global competitiveness. The ERT believes that the interests of European industry, its customers and the communities in which it operates, will be best served by promoting competition and competitiveness on a European scale. Europeans can only solve their problems by closer cooperation, by developing the Single Market into a steadily more integrated economic system, and by drawing on the full potential of the single market to stimulate investment, to increase production and to create new jobs."
ERT does not lobby on detailed legislation, but rather helps set the overall agenda for European unification. (Lobbying is the function of UNICE, with which ERT has a formal relationship; see profile of UNICE). Over the years ERT has pursued:
The legal unification that led to the 1986 Single
Europe Act.
Development of European infrastructure in order to
facilitate industrialization and trade.
European monetary union through a single currency.
Pushing European "industrial competitiveness" by
harmonizing laws to reduce barriers to trade.
"Innovation" through deregulation, financial
restructuring, and educational "reforms" which ensure that corporations have
access to a trained and "flexible" labor market.
Bringing eastern and central Europe into the Union
in ways that benefit western European corporations.
ERT enjoys close access to the EC Commissioners, and the actions of the EC to unify Europe have closely followed ERT's recommendations. All of the agenda items listed above have been or are being implemented-to the benefit of ERT members.
For example, in 1991-93 ERT began running what it calls "management seminars" in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, and ERT's Business Enlargement Councils are meeting with senior government officials in eastern and central Europe to direct those governments' spending and decision making towards projects that benefit corporations. ERT member corporations head the BEC for each country (Shell is the head of the BEC for Hungary, Solvay heads the BEC in Romania, and the BEC in Bulgaria is headed by Lyonnaise des Auix). Unilever has "divided central and eastern Europe with its "rival" Proctor & Gamble, and national companies in the region are going out of business as the multinational corporations take over.
Another success for ERT has been the increase in public and private spending on European infrastructure to facilitate unification; spending is expected to total 400 billion euros by the year 2010. More than 150 projects have been completed or are underway, including the Channel Tunnel, a bridge between Denmark and Sweden, railroad and airport links, and 12,000 kilometers of new roads. ERT helped the European Commission plan the so-called Trans-European Networks (TENs), and pushes for more funding and faster completion. The European Union pressured the Swiss government into easing regulations and repudiating national referendums which called for the reduction of highway traffic.
ERT membership is "by invitation only and is personal rather than corporate," but all 47 members are the "chairmen and chief executives of large multinational companies, representing all sectors of industry, which have their headquarters in Europe and also significant manufacturing and technological presence worldwide." The member list as of June 2000 included the major corporations of Europe: Unilever, TotalFina, Fiat, Akzo Nobel, Royal Dutch/Shell, Norsk Hydro, Siemens, Bayer, Deutsche Telekom, BP Amoco, and Bertelsmann. Wisse Dekker of Philips and Helmut Maucher of Nestle have served as chairmen of ERT. Maucher has also served as head of the International Chamber of Commerce; see the profile of the ICC. The current chairman is Morris Tabaksblat of Reed Elsevier (formerly of Unilever). The current vice-chairmen are Gerhard Cromme of Friedrich Krupp and Morris Tabaksblat of Unilever.
ERT Members meet in plenary sessions twice a year to reach consensus on priorities, budgets, and the publication of ERT reports and proposals. The ERT Chairman, two vice-Chairmen and five other elected members form a Steering Committee which makes proposals to the Plenary Sessions. Working Groups on issues like education, employment, environment, competitiveness, the internal market, enlargement, taxation are chaired by ERT Members and staffed by experts from the ERT companies. ERT Members nominate press officers who help to coordinate ERT communications to national governments, EU institutions and the press.
The ERT "identifies the most important issues, analyses the critical factors and makes its views known to the political decision-makers at the national and European levels by means of reports, position papers and face-to-face discussions." At the European level, the ERT has contacts with the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. Every six months the ERT meets with the government that holds the EU presidency to discuss priorities. At the national level, each ERT member has "personal contacts with his own national government and parliament, business colleagues and industrial federations, other opinion-formers and the press. The ERT has close contacts with UNICE (Union of Industrial and Employers Confederations of Europe), the official representative body of the European business and industry world vis-à-vis the European institutions."
ERT working groups include:
Accounting Standards (currently headed by Air
Liquide)
Competitiveness (headed by Solvay)
Criminality against Companies (headed by Philips)
Enlargement (of the European economic union)
Environment (headed by Renault, and dealing with
climate change and sustainable development)
Foreign Economic Relations (headed by Peter
Sutherland of GATT, BP Amoco, Goldman Sachs)
Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Policy
(headed by Saint-Gobain)
Pension Reform ("ERT believes that European
integration and economic competitiveness are hindered by current public
pension programmes")
Taxation (headed by Unilever)
ERT's Competitiveness Advisory Group (CAG) is its institutional link to the European Commission (EC). Modeled after U.S. President Clinton's Competitiveness Council, the CAG was created in 1995. CAG consists of ERT members (that is, representatives of specific corporations), three trade union representatives, and government leaders, including Jean-Clause Paye, the former Secretary-General of the OECD. Through written reports and lobbying of policy-makers, CAG promotes ERT's agenda, including expansion of infrastructure, expansion into eastern and central Europe, deregulation, trade liberalization, and privatization, market-based environmental incentives rather than regulation, cost benefit analysis of social legislation, and re-education of workers to provide a flexible labor pool.
ERT chairman Morris Tabaksblat, in a speech at the European Business Summit in June 2000, explained that Europe is an "an insufficiently competitive environment, saddling companies with too high a cost base and too rigid rules," and this "has to be rectified-and fast." He warned that markets and new industries like biotechnology should not be regulated (except of course to protect intellectual property). He warned that "public acceptance issues could stifle the European biotechnology industry at birth." Political decision-making needs to be "streamlined" and develop "organically" as technology advances. "Frozen regulations and frozen attitudes will be swept aside by global markets."
Tabaksblat's regret was that "before they are, they can do immeasurable harm" by "limiting [business] options and "dissuading investment." He warned that in the United States, "nothing less than a new world is forming, as the so-called new economy takes root," and urged European business leaders to "shape up" and compete in order to "overtake the United States in a decade." Likewise, European policy-makers (the ones in government) needed to create "a business friendly environment, mainly by "eliminating red tape" and through "reform of the European social model."
Idealizing the accumulation of wealth, "from Venetian traders to the Dutch entrepreneurs of the Golden Age, from English mill owners to the German industrial dynasts," Tabaksblat declared that "there is nothing innately shameful about becoming rich, or emulating others who do, nothing un-European about it!" Better to "refashion the social conquests of the last new economy" by reforming the educational system in order to train and retrain the labor force for new jobs and by "injecting appreciation of the opportunities in change."
Tabaksblat pointed to the fact that more people in the U.S. (74 percent) have jobs than in Europe (61 percent), and urged that Europe catch up by getting more Europeans to work-including women, older workers, and young people. The fastest way to the future is to guarantee "adequate rates of return" and "easy access to markets and to capital." Change would be painful for many, and that "not least for unions specifically representing old trades and skills, for local communities where these trades have traditionally been carried out-this is difficult to digest; for Europe's policy-makers, however, it's time it was obvious." The "urgency" to win the "global game" by accelerating economic and social change is "out of your hands, as it is out of mine; timing is determined by the pace of change-in markets, in technologies, in expectations; we haven't the option to think some more about it-we've done that too long."
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 with funding from ultraconservative sources including Scaife and Coors, is a think tank whose mission is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." Heritage produces articles, lectures, conferences, and briefings for Congress, Congressional staff, executive branch policymakers, the news media, and academia.
U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the Heritage Foundation "the most far-reaching conservative organization in the country in the war of ideas," and U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said "when conservatives on Capitol Hill are looking to turn ideas into legislation, the first place they go is The Heritage Foundation." Two-thirds of the Heritage Foundation's 1981 policy recommendations to President Reagan were adopted.
During the first session of the 106th Congress, Heritage experts briefed 143 Representatives and 41 Senators on issues ranging from taxation to ballistic missile defense, and held 72 working group meetings and issue briefings for congressional staff. In addition, 32 Heritage experts testified before congressional committees during 1999.
During 1999, more than 180 articles written by Heritage's analysts and executives were published in leading U.S. newspapers. Heritage analysts appeared on more than 125 television and nearly twice as many radio programs.
The Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy was created in 1999 to help conservatives use the media more effectively, and to "increase the media's understanding of conservatives, conservatism, and the conservative approach to problem-solving." Heritage contacts reporters, columnists, editorial writers, news directors and broadcast producers, and organizes "fact-finding trips" so journalists "can see how problems are being solved nationwide at the local community level." The Center's national advisory board includes William F. Buckley Jr., conservative journalists Mary Lou Forbes, Paul Greenberg, and Charles Krauthammer, and several professors of journalism.
Heritage Foundation programs in 1999 included:
Governors Jeb Bush of Florida and Gary Johnson of
New Mexico on school choice
Ohio Treasurer Kenneth Blackwell and former U.S.
Rep. Jack Kemp on tax reform
Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) on private construction of
public schools
Sen. Rick Santorum on the proper role of religion in
politics and society
former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle discussed
foreign policy and national security
former U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
discussed America's Cold War triumph
former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and
former CIA Director James Woolsey spoke in favor of missile defense.
Heritage urges rapid build-up of a sea- and space-based "Star Wars" missile system called for by the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, and calls for the U.S. to reject any restraint in the testing of nuclear missiles.
Heritage takes predictable corporate positions such as attacking OSHA health and safety regulations and calling for the abolishment of the U.S. Dept of Labor, because it is "presenting a barrier to the formation of firms and their ability to create jobs." Heritage wants to privatize social security, and says that states should have "flexibility" in their minimum wage, in order to help implement welfare reform, because the federal minimum wage is "a burdensome federal mandate that restricts [the states'] ability to help the poor."
Heritage attacks labor's "leftward tilt" and says that "an activist labor movement may be the most significant new force in American politics, but the agenda of labor's new leaders is radically different from that of the traditional labor movement. Curiously, much of this new agenda is unconnected with workplace issues, not generally supported among rank-and-file union members, and clearly outside the mainstream of American politics. In recent decades, organized labor has been transformed from a relatively centrist political force into a powerful lobby for liberal special interests and big government. Organized labor has decided to use its billions of dollars in dues revenue to defeat conservative Members of Congress, while also encouraging the Boy Scouts to admit homosexuals and atheists, offering financial contributions to political groups that promote abortion, and opposing welfare reform and a balanced budget."
The Heritage Foundation's board of trustees includes archconservatives from the Scaife and Coors families.
Pepperdine
University, and several family foundations, including the Sarah Scaife
Foundation, The Allegheny Foundation, and the Carthage Foundation-all of which
are funders of the Heritage Foundation.
Holland H. "Holly" Coors is a member of the Coors
family, which was instrumental in creating the Heritage Foundation, and serves
on the board of trustees of the Adolph Coors and Castle Rock Foundations.
Joseph Coors is an honorary trustee of Heritage.
Other Heritage trustees include a former advisor to
the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a former director of the U.S. Information Agency,
a former Secretary of the Navy, and the chairman of the conservative Amway
Corporation, who also served as chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Heritage claims its more than 200,000 members make it "the most broadly supported think tank in America." Heritage Foundation had income of $43 million in 1998; two-thirds of it from individuals, 26 percent from foundations, and 4 percent from corporations. Amway, Joseph Coors, Pfizer, John M. Olin Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation are recent funders of the Heritage Foundation's work.
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
The Hoover Institution is a conservative think tank founded in 1919 as a center for advanced study in domestic and international affairs, supporting conservative scholars, sponsoring conferences, publishing books and articles, and producing television and radio programs.
The Hoover Institution says it "strives to conceive and disseminate ideas defining a free society, involving the study of politics, economics, and their interrelationships (that is, political economy) within the United States and other countries." The Hoover Institution describes its work in terms of the rule of law and property rights; promoting the idea of society based on individualism rather than classes; government performance in terms of accountability to society; economic growth and tax policy; and international rivalries and global cooperation with respect to security, trade and commerce, and the rule of law. The Hoover has a program devoted to the reform of public education, and addressing specific topics such as school curriculum, testing and standards, school finance reform, merit pay, the effects of teachers' unions, charter schools, and school choice.
Government officials from the U.S. and overseas are invited to address Hoover Institution scholars, staff, supporters, and members of the Stanford community. Hoover researchers and staff give Congressional testimony, and offer what Hoover calls "public service" by serving as advisors to the U.S. government. Hoover representatives also serve as missionaries overseas; the Hoover Library's deputy director, for example, serves on the editorial board of the International Democracy Foundation in Moscow.
Other Hoover scholars are former politicians. For example, former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Secretary of State (and corporate insider) George Schultz are research fellows at Hoover. Other Hoover scholars include national security and Pentagon officials like William Perry, Richard Allen, and Bobby Inman. "Honorary Fellows" include Ronald Reagan, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Margaret Thatcher.
The Hoover invites journalists to spend time at the Hoover Institution, "studying public policy issues in a scholarly environment, conducting research on topics of their choice, and interacting with resident fellows and visiting scholars." The Media Fellows Program "has evolved over the past years to become a vital cog in the Institution's efforts to increase its impact on public policy discussion." More than twenty media fellows were in residence at Hoover in 1998, influencing major newspapers (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post), magazines (Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, Reader's Digest), and television (ABC News, CNN's Inside Politics, and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer).
The Hoover Institution produces its own mass media as well; its "Uncommon Knowledge" weekly TV series, produced jointly with KTEH, a PBS affiliate station in San Jose, California, is broadcast to eighty stations covering fifty-seven television markets in twenty-nine states.
The Institution's annual budget is approximately $25 million. Like other ultraconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hudson Institute (see the separate profiles for these organizations), the Hoover Institution is funded by the ultraconservative foundations such as John M. Olin, Lilly, Smith Richardson, Carthage, and Scaife.
Forty percent of the Hoover budget comes from donations from individuals "and their related foundations and corporations." Another 45 percent of the budget comes from income from the Hoover's endowment funds, the market value of which exceeds $250 million. Another 15 percent of the budget comes from Stanford University, which donated $4 million in the 1990-91 academic year. The Hoover Institution is a non-profit organization using Stanford University's tax exempt status, while the Hoover Library claims to be an "entirely independent" institution, even though it is located on the Stanford campus and Stanford accounts for about two-thirds of the Library's budget.
Hoover's "board of overseers" includes the Archer Daniels Midland chairman Dwayne Andreas, Texas oilman Robert Bass, Seattle television personality Jean Enersen, Herbert Hoover III, David Packard of military and electronics giant Hewlitt-Packard, former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Mellon oil heir and ultraconservative philanthropist Richard M. Scaife, and free-market guru and former U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.
Hudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is a conservative think tank founded in 1961 by Herman Kahn, Max Singer, and Oscar Ruebhausen. Under contract with government agencies ranging from the U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice to Wisconsin State to the City of Indianapolis, the Hudson Institute has published books and reports on everything from military strategy and national security, to agriculture and the environment, to trade, labor, and economic development, to health care, welfare, and education reform, but the primary focus is on "free" trade and enterprise and a strong military. (Founder Herman Kahn was a physicist and military strategist who suggested that nuclear war could be won). Hudson's annual awards have gone to such luminaries as Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, Barry Goldwater, and Henry Kissinger.
Dennis T. Avery, author of Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic, is the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues. Avery "travels the country and the world preaching his gospel of biotechnology, pesticides, irradiation, factory farming and free trade." Avery claims organic farming takes up too much land and thus destroys wildlife habitat, that people who eat organic and natural foods are at a high risk for food poisoning. Avery's statements have appeared in the New York Times, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Investor's Business Daily, and the Journal of Commerce, and stories about "killer organic food" have appeared in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, under headlines such as, "Organic just means it's dirtier, more expensive," "Organic food--'It's eight times more likely to kill you" and "Organic food link to E. coli deaths." Avery receives a federal pension from his past employment by the U.S. Departments of State and Agriculture, and receives another $25,000 a year from the Hudson Institute. Hudson is funded by Monsanto, Du Pont, DowElanco, Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, Procter & Gamble, and other corporations.
Hudson employs more than seventy researchers and staff and maintains offices in Indianapolis, Washington DC, Montreal, and Brussels. In 1998 the Hudson Institute had a budget of $8 million, mostly from grants from conservative foundations such as Olin, Scaife, and Pew (the president of the Hudson Institute is Herbert London, John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University). Hudson is a tax-exempt non-profit organization and thus prohibited from substantial lobbying activities.
International Chamber of Commerce
ICC, founded in 1919, has thousands of member corporations and industry associations from over 130 countries. ICC membership is open to corporations and companies in all sectors, national professional and sectoral associations, business and employers federations, law firms and consultancies, chambers of commerce, and individuals involved in international business. "By being part of ICC, members gain influence both at national and international level. ICC offers members many of the advantages of belonging to a prestigious club and the chance to forge business relationships at the highest level at exclusive ICC events."
ICC claims to be "the world business organization, the only representative body that speaks with authority on behalf of enterprises from all sectors in every part of the world." ICC committees in the "world's major capitals coordinate with their membership to address the concerns of the business community and to convey to their governments the business views formulated by ICC." The topics of concern to ICC range from advertising and marketing, arbitration, banking, business in society, business law, commercial crime, commercial practice, competition, customs, economic policy, e-commerce, energy, environment, extortion and bribery, financial services and insurance, intellectual property, taxation, telecommunications, trade and investment, and transport.
"ICC promotes an open international trade and investment system and the market economy. Its conviction that trade is a powerful force for peace and prosperity dates from the organization's origins early in the last century. The small group of far-sighted business leaders who founded ICC called themselves 'the merchants of peace'" and ICC "works for the liberalization of trade and investment within the multilateral trading system."
Making the rules, formal and informal
The ICC compares itself, with no apparent humor or irony, to an international government. "The ICC World Council is the equivalent of the general assembly of a major intergovernmental organization. The big difference is that the delegates are business executives and not government officials." As if proof that there is no need for another government, ICC states that "companies look to ICC as they meet the challenges of globalization and adjust to a world in which the state's role in the economy is no longer pre-eminent."
As long as it is ruling the world, ICC offers to act as judge and jury as well through its International Court of Arbitration, "the world's leading arbitral institution." The ICC shows others how to make the law as well, through its Institute of World Business Law, which offers courses and seminars to lawyers and corporate executives on everything from investment protection and negotiation of contracts to international arbitration.
"ICC members are at the forefront of business self-regulation. ICC is world leader in setting voluntary rules, standards and codes for the conduct of international trade that are accepted by all business sectors and observed in thousands of transactions every day." The rules include trading instruments such as Incoterms (ICC's standard commercial terms), the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credit, and GUIDEC (a set of guidelines for ensuring trustworthy digital transactions over the Internet)."
ICC members "establish the business stance" on trade and investment policies on financial services, information technologies, telecommunications, marketing ethics, the environment, transportation, competition law and intellectual property.
Making the case for the global economy
"The great debate on globalization is in full swing. Can-or should-it be stopped? Is it pushing governments to the sidelines? Does it have a human face? Is it a threat to jobs? What are the benefits and what is the downside? ICC is convinced that the emergence of a global market economy, a process that has only just begun, will bring unprecedented prosperity to millions. But the right balance needs to be found between rules and freedom if the global economy is to realize its full potential. This is what this new section of the ICC web site is all about. We make the case for the global economy." ICC has made its case in a steady stream of articles, some of which can be read on the ICC website:
Globalization Holds the Key to Ending World Poverty.
Free Trade Helps Developing Countries Catch Up.
Growth is Good for the Poor.
Victims of the Refusal to Globalize.
Multinationals are a Positive Force.
Globalization Offers a Road Out of Poverty.
Trade is Often the Best Way to Improve the
Environment.
Globalization is Irreversible and Not an Option.
Special relationships with the United Nations and WTO
"ICC's privileged links with major international organizations, including the UN and its specialized agencies and the World Trade Organization, allow the organization to effectively represent the interests of its members in international fora. ICC members prepare business positions for submission to international organizations and also, through ICC's global network of national committees, to governments"
"ICC works with the United Nations, other international organizations and regional bodies to ensure that they take the business viewpoint into consideration when making decisions affecting the private sector. It carries out collaborative projects with international organizations and provides business expertise to policy makers. ICC's permanent representatives on-site in Geneva and New York are responsible for relations with the UN and other international organizations."
"The United Nations: ICC is engaged in intensive dialogue with the United Nations and its Secretary General on how business expertise can help the UN to attain its economic objectives." "Within a year of the creation of the United Nations, ICC was granted consultative status at the highest level with the UN and its specialized agencies."
"ICC enjoys consultative status at the highest level with the United Nations and its agencies. It is the preferred partner of international and regional organizations whenever decisions have to be made on global issues of importance to business."
"The World Trade Organization: At its regular meetings with ambassadors to the World Trade Organization, ICC is promoting business ideas and objectives for achieving a successful new round of trade negotiations."
Leaders of the rich nations, advising the poor nations
"The Group of Seven industrial countries: Every year, the head of the host government of the G7 industrial countries confers with the ICC presidency on the eve of the summit. The consultation has proved to be a highly effective means of channeling business recommendations to the summit leaders."
"Guides to investment: In a joint project with UNCTAD, ICC enlisted support from 30 major companies in providing guidance to least developed countries on policies and practical steps to attract more foreign direct investment."
Investigating crime
ICC Commercial Crime Services investigates commercial crimes "committed on land, at sea or in cyberspace... Unencumbered by bureaucracy, and at the request of clients from the worlds of international finance, trade and transport, CCS multidisciplinary staff are in a unique position to respond swiftly to alerts anywhere in the world." "Investigations are carried out by CCS for commercial clients with a view to recovering losses. In addition, victims of fraudulent transactions are given help to extricate themselves and to minimize damage. Back-up services provided by the commercial crimes division of ICC include legal advice, support in litigation and expert testimony in courts of law."
The ICC International Maritime Bureau "covers all types of fraud and malpractice in trading and transport. In cases of maritime fraud or when ships fall victim to pirate attacks, the bureau reacts swiftly using staff and contacts worldwide. The bureau, which has observer status with Interpol, also investigates suspicious cargo losses from containers during sea, road and rail transits."
ICC's Commercial Crime Bureau investigates "financial frauds and suspected scams to enable recoveries to be made. In conjunction with the bureau's work to trace and recover assets, senior staff members can provide expert testimony at court hearings anywhere in the world."
ICC has a Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau which traces fake products back from point of sale to place of manufacture. The ICC Cybercrime Unit identifies criminal interference on corporate computer networks. ICC showcased an "anti-piracy life-jacket," designed to protect sailors in case of pirate attacks, at the London Dome in June 2000. ICC's Piracy Reporting Centre found a hijacked tanker in South East Asian waters in June 2000, and now has a dedicated website where ship owners can log-on and view the exact position of their vessels at any time."
Membership & Structure
The ICC consists of 5,500 corporations and 1,700 organizations (mainly trade and industrial associations and chambers of commerce), nominated by national committees or groups in more than 60 countries. The governing body, the ICC Council, meets twice per year. An executive board of fifteen to twenty members is appointed by the ICC Council. The member-wide Congress meets every three years, with the 33rd meeting held in Budapest in May 2000.
Officers
ICC President Adnan Kassar is CEO of Fransabank
Group, a leading finance and banking group, with offices in Beirut, Paris,
Hong Kong and Budapest. Kassar is president of the Federation of Lebanese
Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, permanent vice-chairman and
former president of the General Union of Chambers of Commerce, Industry and
Agriculture for Arab Countries.
Concept Five Technologies, former CEO of US West, and chairman of the US Council
for International Business.
ICC member of the presidency Helmut O. Maucher is a
former CEO and chairman of Nestlé, chairman of the Council on European
Responsibilities (COEUR), and board member of the Industrial Investment
Council (IIC). Maucher completed two years as ICC President in December 1998.
ICC secretary general Maria Livanos Cattaui was
previously with the World Economic Forum in Geneva, and was responsible for
the annual meeting in Davos.
Meetings
"ICC's programme of conferences and seminars is an essential channel for passing on the world business organization's expertise to a wider audience. ICC conferences are held in all parts of the world, many of them in collaboration with national committees." "ICC conferences are always highly topical and are often a platform for defining policies favourable to business."
"Every two years ICC holds its World Congress, always at a different venue and at the invitation of a national committee. These are major global business events that bring together business and public leaders to discuss issues that affect the environment in which they work."
"At the invitation of ICC Hungary, ICC's 33rd World Congress, "The New Europe in the World Economy" was held on 3-5 May 2000 in Budapest. With the full backing of the Hungarian government, the congress was inaugurated by President Arpad Göncz of Hungary and ICC President Adnan Kassar. Its main themes were financial strength, the global view, the world trade agenda, big issues for companies and EU enlargement. Representatives from business and governments worldwide attended the congress, with a particularly strong participation from countries in the region."
The U.S. Council on International Business is the U.S. affiliate of the ICC.
Even when the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) ran into
strong opposition in 1998, business groupings like the International Chamber of
Commerce (ICC) refused the OECD's proposals to include some rules for corporate
behaviour. The ICC has campaigned vigorously against binding regulations in
numerous multilateral environmental treaties, including those on climate change,
biodiversity and ozone-depleting chemicals (the Montreal Protocol), promoting
self-regulation instead. The U.S. Council on International Business (USCIB), the
U.S. affiliate of the ICC, fiercely resists corporate codes of conduct promoted
by trade unions and environmental and human rights organizations. In December
1998, the USCIB issued a statement saying that "such externally imposed codes
are unacceptable to the business community, are unworkable, and would be
ineffective in resolving labour and environmental problems." The USCIB calls the
demands made on business by NGOs "unrealistic, contradictory, and
counter-productive" and rejects "the notion that companies can be held
responsible for the overall behaviour and policies of their subcontractors and
suppliers throughout the supply chain." The USCIB furthermore rejects the
desirability of standardising corporate codes of conduct, and is vehemently
opposed to the independent auditing and verification of "these imposed codes,"
warning against "the hazards of accepting such an intrusion."
-- Corporate Europe Observer, Issue 5, October 1999
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO was established as the Atlantic Alliance in 1949 as a defensive political and military alliance between ten European countries, the U.S., and Canada. The stated purpose of NATO is to provide for the common security of its members through economic, scientific, political, and military cooperation and consultation. NATO "peacekeeping" activities have increased in the 1990s.
Recent NATO military action in Yugoslavia is part of a long strategic (economic) battle to control the Balkans and the Central Asian resources that lie beyond. The current focus is to secure oil and gas pipeline routes from the oilfields of the Caspian Sea to the consumers of Europe. Multinational oil corporations are signing multibillion-dollar contracts with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, while the U.S., European, and Russian governments are lobbying, bribing, fomenting civil wars, and conducting their own military operations in order to secure territory. Players include former British Energy Minister Tim Eggar (now CEO of the British corporation Monument Oil), former British Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind (now a director of British oil corporation Ramco), two former U.S. National Security Advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft (now a director of AIOC), as well as former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (oil corporation attorney), former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, former U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (then CEO of oil services corporation Halliburton, now candidate for U.S. Vice President), and former White House chief of staff John Sununu. Iran-Contra figure and former U.S. Air Force major general Richard Secord has been helping to train the Azerbaijani army.
Expanding the NATO Market for U.S. Weapons
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, Western powers have been moving economically and militarily into the vacuum. The U.S. brings weapons as well as oil technology. The U.S. government accounts for more than a third of the world's military spending, and the U.S. exports three times more weapons than Russia, its nearest competitor:
Top exporters of major conventional weapons, 1995-1999
(data in 1990 U.S. $ million)
| U.S. |
53,443 |
| Russia |
14,628 |
| France |
11,731 |
| UK |
7,343 |
| Germany |
6,085 |
| Netherlands |
2,239 |
| China |
2,212 |
| Ukraine |
2,048 |
| Italy |
1,965 |
| Canada |
1,095 |
Weapons are manufactured by corporations, but much of the expense is funded by U.S. taxpayers. In addition, the U.S. government is a major promoter of the sale of weapons to other countries, and through its Departments of Defense, State, and Commerce, probably has more than 6,000 employees spending $400 million a year to promote weapons exports. The U.S. Commerce Department pushes arms exports by analyzing markets and finding buyers. U.S. Secretaries of Commerce promote U.S. weapons sales as part of their overseas trade missions. The Secretary of Defense makes explicit sales pitches to foreign governments and negotiates sales contracts on behalf of specific corporations such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The U.S. government displays U.S. weapons, offers test flights, and sends military personnel to air and weapons shows in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The U.S. ambassadors, in cooperation with U.S. manufacturers, push sales of U.S. helicopters, planes, and missiles in the host countries.
Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth. -- Henry Ford
NATO has been restructuring its policies to "meet the new security challenges" in Europe by adding new members from central and eastern Europe. The expansion of NATO is seen by U.S. weapons manufacturers as a huge new market for their products, and the U.S. government is doing everything it can to help sell weapons. The Aerospace Industries Association, a trade association of weapons manufacturers, estimates that $10 billion in military aircraft may be sold to new NATO members such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. RAND estimates total weapons sales to eastern and central Europe may reach $35 billion in the next decade.
Some of these weapons will be manufactured in Europe by partnerships between U.S. and European corporations. Boeing has acquired 35 percent of Czech aircraft manufacturer Aero Vochody. Textron bought 70 percent of Romanian helicopter manufacturer IAR Brasov. Lockheed Martin has agreed to build F-16 aircraft in partnership with the Polish manufacturer PZL Mielec. Some or all of the costs of these weapons is thus "offset" by U.S. corporate investments in European companies, by the resulting technology transfers, and by U.S. corporate promises to promote the country's exports in international markets. One analysis estimated that between U.S. government subsidies, and the transfer of U.S. jobs and sales overseas as part of European partnerships, the U.S. economy actually lost more than $1 billion on weapons sales in 1996.
Boeing, Raytheon, United Technologies, and TRW funded NATO's 50th Anniversary celebrations in Washington DC, and the host committee is made up of weapons corporation executives and former U.S. Commerce Department officials.
Endless money forms the sinews of war. -- Cicero, Philippics
The U.S. weapons industry routinely spends more than $40 million per year on lobbying government officials, and contributes more than $10 million to U.S. political candidates. Weapons industry lobbying organizations include the U.S. Committee on NATO (formerly the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, the Aerospace Industries Association, the American League for Exports and Security Assistance (ALESA), and the Defense Policy Advisory Committee on Trade (DPACT), a quasi-official group providing "advice" to the U.S. government. Weapons lobbyists also work with ethnic lobbying organizations. For example, the U.S. Committee on NATO works with the Polish American Congress and the Hungarian American Foundation, which are also working to promote NATO expansion.
Under the spur of profit potential,
powerful lobbies spring up to argue
for even greater munitions expenditures. And the web of special interests grows.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
One of the ways the U.S. government promotes weapons sales is by making loans to the countries buying weapons from U.S. corporations. In the 1990s, $9 billion in loans were written off for various political and economic reasons. But since 1995, the U.S. government has offered another $1.5 billion in grants, subsidized loans, and weapons giveaways to prospective NATO members, and arranges test flights of U.S. fighter aircraft for potential government customers.
Lockheed Martin received a $10 million grant from the Pentagon to coordinate a series of Air Sovereignty Operations Centers (ASOC) set up in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania.
The U.S. Defense Export Loan Guarantee (DELG) program, created in 1995 after lobbying by U.S. weapons manufacturers, offers guaranteed loans on sales of U.S. military equipment to 39 countries, including 10 nations in East and Central Europe. The U.S. Defense Department's International and Commercial Programs office works with bankers and weapons industry executives to promote the sales.
RAND
RAND maintains offices in Arlington,
Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
New York City (Council for Aid to Education); and Leiden, Netherlands.
Project RAND (which stands for Research And Development) was originally set up during World War II by the Douglas Aircraft Company and the U.S. Air Force (then the Army Air Force) to analyze ways to improve the effectiveness of the B-29 bomber. After the war, the Commanding General of the Army Air Force, in a report to the Secretary of War, wrote that
"During this war the Army, Army Air Forces, and the Navy have made unprecedented use of scientific and industrial resources. The conclusion is inescapable that we have not yet established the balance necessary to insure the continuance of teamwork among the military, other government agencies, industry, and the universities. Scientific planning must be years in advance of the actual research and development work."
As a result, RAND became an independent non-profit corporation in 1948, "dedicated to furthering and promoting scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the United States." RAND's original board of trustees included representatives of Douglas Aircraft, the president of Carnegie Corporation, the president of the California Institute of Technology, an attorney who later served as president and chairman of the Ford Foundation, the director of Westinghouse's research laboratories, a military consultant and a physicist from MIT, a social scientist from Princeton University, the president of the University of Illinois, and the director of Battelle Memorial Institute.
The Ford Foundation, Pacific National Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, and Union Trust Company arranged the initial financing. The U.S. government still provides the largest share of RAND's budget, but corporate foundations (Ford) and corporate clients also provide funding.
Describing itself as "a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research analysis," RAND employs more than 600 researchers in economics, mathematics and statistics, medicine, law, business, physical sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts and letters, and computer science. The staff comes from "the laboratories of industry, the seminars of universities, and the offices of administration, [and RAND] is very conscious of [the] need for teamwork."
RAND research areas include space systems, digital computing and artificial intelligence, systems analysis, social policy planning, poverty, health care, and education. RAND has compiled a comprehensive data base on AIDS victims, and analyzed the debate over class action lawsuits. One RAND report was devoted to Identifying Policy Options for Developing Countries. RAND's website explains how the diverse subjects are unified:
"With roots in the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, the early defense-related agenda evolved-in concert with the nation's attention-to encompass such diverse subject areas as space; economic, social, and political affairs overseas; and the direct role of government in social and economic problem-solving at home."
RAND's "economic problem-solving" includes protecting corporations from liability for their actions. AS RAND explains it, "The stakes are rising in the American system of civil justice. Hundreds of millions of dollars in liability payments as well as the international competitiveness of some of America's most influential corporations rest on the decisions of our nation's lawmakers. Not surprisingly, the work of RAND's Institute for Civil Justice on monitoring this system, analyzing procedures, and evaluating options for reform has gained national prominence."
Military research remains a key focus, and RAND enjoys a special relationship to the Pentagon. RAND research for the U.S. Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy is carried out within the National Defense Research Institute (NDRI), a federally funded research and development center. RAND's Arroyo Center, founded in the 1980s, is the U.S. Army's only federally-funded research and development center for studies and analysis. Project AIR FORCE, an "independent" nonprofit research and analysis institution under contract to the U.S. Air Force since the 1940s, is a division of RAND. "[These military research] activities are complemented by RAND's domestic and international research on health, education, civil and criminal justice, labor and population, international economics, and science and technology." For example, RAND projects "help policymakers understand world political, military, and economic trends; the sources of potential regional conflict; and emerging threats to U.S. national security."
In March 2000, RAND's Arroyo Center hosted an educational conference to discuss "the preparedness of the U.S. military to fight in the teeming streets of what may become the increasingly unavoidable battlefield of the future: the foreign city." Other studies have considered Air Power as a Coercive Instrument, and analyzed International Law and the Politics of Urban Air Operations.
From its Arlington, Virginia office near CIA headquarters, RAND conducts research for the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Intelligence Council, and other "intelligence" agencies. "RAND carries out traditional political, security, and economic research for these clients, as well as research on personnel issues, acquisition reform, and technical analyses." RAND's research includes investigation of political and economic trends to find the sources of potential regional conflict. RAND studies for these clients have included such titles as Public Support for U.S. Military Operations, Can the Military Help Prevent Drug Use Among Youth?, Maximizing the Psychological Effects of Airpower: Lessons from Past Wars, and A Global Infrastructure to Support Expeditionary Aerospace Forces.
RAND also has key allied governments, prospective NATO partners, and newly independent European states as clients, all with "strict adherence to its public interest charter and in consultation with the U.S. Department of Defense."
Under an Air Force contract in the 1960s, RAND helped create the first computer network (and precursor to the Internet), ARPANET, intended to ensure the military would be able to maintain communications during a nuclear war. RAND's interest in the political and military uses of the Internet continues. For example, a recent RAND report explored Employing Commercial Communications: Wideband Investment Options for the Department of Defense. But RAND and others are also concerned about how citizens use the Internet. Wes Pedersen, communications director of the Public Affairs Council, warned that the Internet has become "the dream tool of activist groups that want to thwart the corporate power of multinationals," and declared that the Internet was a vehicle for "environmentalism, anti-free trade, anti-Americanism and, most astonishingly, anarchism." Pointing to NGO criticism of corporations like Nike, Monsanto, and Shell, Pedersen claimed that "countering the growing influence of these cyber-powered anti-American, anti-corporate international organizations is one of the greatest challenges U.S. corporate and government PA practitioners will face in this new millennium."
In an article originally published in Comparative Strategy in 1993, RAND researchers discussed the use of the Internet by activists promoting social change. A later RAND publication called Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico examined the global Internet support the Zapatista movement enjoyed, and suggests ways that governments might respond to such activism. The Defense Department's Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict office is further examining the dangers and uses of "netwar."
Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD)
The Transatlantic Business Dialogue was established in 1995 to be "a unique, business-driven process" for shaping European and U.S. policy on "barriers to business" and other trade issues.
"The TABD is an unprecedented venture in government-business partnership tackling issues relating to the world's most important economic relationship - that between the United States and the European Union. It has been called an "experiment in entrepreneurial diplomacy" in which American and European business leaders at the CEO-level work together with a common objective of removing the remaining barriers to trade and investment. Their joint recommendations are communicated to senior-level U.S. and European Union officials who, in turn, work with business to develop effective policy with the ultimate goal of benefiting both economies through improved competitiveness and the creation of new jobs. The TABD has no formal structure and no official secretariat; nor is it a new institution or simply another business organization designed to influence policy makers. Rather, the TABD is a private-sector force designed to respond to the new reality of trade; namely that companies are now thinking and acting globally and their involvement in trade policy development is a natural outgrowth of such globalization."
TABD's recommendations are presented at the biannual EU-US summits, and according to U.S. officials, most of them are adopted by the EU and U.S. The tight relationship between TABD and government is no surprise, since TABD was established at the request of the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce, which, in the words of then EU Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, "asked businessmen from both sides of the Atlantic to get together and see if they could reach agreement on what needed to be done next. If they could, governments would be hard put to explain why it couldn't be done. The result was dramatic. European and American business leaders united in demanding more and faster trade liberalisation. And that had an immediate impact..." At the EU Summit in June 1999, Brittan expressed satisfaction about the "clear, strong message of the usefulness of the TABD, and of the consensus between the Commission and industry on many important issues."
The five TABD working groups deal with Standards and Regulatory Policy, Business Facilitation, Global Issues, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and E-Commerce. TABD makes recommendations on how to regulate (and deregulate) intellectual property rights, certification of the chemical and biotech industries, and negotiations under the WTO. At the June 1999 annual conference U.S. President Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on the TABD to provide business input into the recovery plan for South Eastern Europe. Journalists were barred from proceedings, even those involving EU commissioners and U.S. officials.
The TABD co-chairmen for 1999 were Konrad Eckenschwiller of the French employers organization MEDEF (Mouvement des Enterprises de France) and Xerox Vice President Mike Farren. The chairmen for the year 2000 are George David (United Technologies) and Bertrand Collomb (LaFarge). Working groups are led by reps from Xerox, Goodyear Tire, Siemens, Boeing, AT&T, Time Warner, and other corporations.
A TABD CEO conference is held each year "to bring together business leaders and senior level government representatives to make constructive recommendations and measure progress on existing trade impediments. This unique combination of CEOs and senior government officials provides a unique opportunity to expand economic opportunities and to achieve breakthroughs on trade obstacles."
Globalisation is a positive-sum game - all sectors of society can benefit. Access to foreign markets allows more choice and better products, and allows economies to grow, increasing employment and access to higher education opportunities... However, the lack of success in launching a new trade round, and the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international institutions, reinforce the need to build confidence in global trade policy. Institutional reform will improve transparency and access to the multilateral process. The transatlantic business community is committed to promoting the positive benefits of trade and working with governments to dispel the negative myths about trade liberalization. The TABD supports, as a first priority, the launch of an ambitious and broad-based round of trade negotiations as soon as possible... -- TABD Mid Year Report May 23, 2000, Brussels, Belgium
TABD conferences have been in Seville Spain in 1995, Chicago in 1996, Rome in 1997, Charlotte North Carolina in 1998, and Berlin in 1999. The 2000 TABD meeting will be held at the Omni Netherland Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 16-18. The conference "will bring together more than 200 American and European CEOs and senior government officials to develop recommendations on how to best boost trade and investment... Issues include the development of a common business agenda for future World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, the early accession of China to the WTO, the creation of industry-driven principles for e-commerce, and the utilization of an early warning system to resolve trade investment issues before they become disputes."
Elected representatives agreed in the Uruguay Round to largely remove traditional tariffs as inefficient restraints on economic liberty. Consumers and their economies benefit directly through better access to high-quality goods, but many of these benefits can thwarted by more insidious short-term, protectionist trade barriers. The new obstacles to trade are now domestic regulations. We draw attention to this fact - that liberalising efforts of our governments can be frustrated by routine, out-dated traditions and bureaucracy... Non-tariff barriers to operations should be tackled with the same zeal. The TABD's ultimate objective is "approved once, accepted everywhere." -- TABD Mid Year Report May 23, 2000, Brussels, Belgium
The TABD recognizes the efforts currently being undertaken to implement WTO rulings on the three outstanding transatlantic WTO cases (bananas, beef hormones and FSC). -- TABD Mid Year Report May 23, 2000, Brussels, Belgium
Trilateral Commission
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U.S. Office |
European Office |
Japanese Office |
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345 East 46th Street |
5, rue de Teheran |
4-9-17 Minami-Azabu |
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New York, New York 10017 |
75008 Paris, France |
Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, Japan |
|
Telephone: 212-661-1180 |
Telephone: 81-3: 3446-7781 |
|
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Fax: 212-949-7268 |
Fax: 33-1: 45 61 42 87 |
Fax: 81-3: 3443-7580 |
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others in order to foster cooperation between the U.S., Europe, and Japan in shaping governmental and non-governmental action to renovate the international system shaped after World War II. Recently focii have been globalization and labor markets, energy security, and "managing the international system."
Members who take up positions in their national governments are supposed to give up their Trilateral Commission membership "to preserve the Commission's unofficial character." Likewise, the consensus reached at Trilateral meetings is also informal and broad. As the Commission's website explains,
"The Trilateral Commission does not adopt positions at its annual meetings agreed to by all participating members. The membership is too large and diverse for detailed agreement to be reached on a disputed issue. Differences are sometimes acute, resulting in unresolved debate. Members return home from the annual meeting with a variety of freshly informed perspectives on issues of concern with which they may or may not agree, but by which their own thinking is generally sharpened. The team of authors may reach detailed agreement on the issues addressed in particular task force reports. The Chairmen have sometimes issued statements at the conclusion of an annual meeting putting forward a few main themes and conclusions from the discussions."
Membership currently includes about 335 businessmen, labor union leaders, academics, media executives, and politicians from North America, Western Europe, and Japan, led by three regional chairmen, currently:
Paul Volcker (former chairman of U.S. Federal
Reserve Bank).
Otto Graf Lambsdorff (German Minister of Economics,
German Bundestag 1972-98, Foundation Initiative of German Enterprises, Liberal
International).
Yotaro Kobayashi (Fuji Xerox, Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone, Keizai Doyukai Japanese Association of Corporate Executive, Aspen
Institute Japan, ABB Ltd.).
There is also an executive committee of 36, which currently includes executives from ABB, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Levi Strauss, and others.
The annual meeting of Trilateral Commission members, typically three days long, rotates among the three regions: 1996 Vancouver British Columbia in 1996, Tokyo in 1997, Berlin in 1998, Washington DC in 1999, and Tokyo in 2000. Roughly half of the members of the Trilateral Commission are likely to participate in any particular annual meeting. Each meeting also includes some participants from beyond the membership, including individuals from non-Trilateral countries.
"The program typically includes a few sessions devoted to current developments in each region, with special attention to the host country and region. Typically two sessions are framed by draft task force reports on particular issues, prepared by teams of authors from the three regions. Other sessions on key common issues are generally opened by a few panelists speaking from different perspectives. Luncheon and dinner sessions are often occasions for speeches by government leaders."
The regional groups within the Trilateral Commission carry on some activities of their own. The European group, with its office in Paris, has an annual weekend meeting each fall. The North American group, with its office in New York, occasionally gathers with a special speaker for a dinner or luncheon event-as does the Japanese group, with its office in Tokyo.
Speakers at the 1999 annual meeting in Washington, DC were a who's who of power, including:
Affairs)
Peter Sutherland (WTO/GATT, BP Amoco, Goldman Sachs,
EC Commission)
Lawrence Summers (then U.S. Deputy Secretary of the
Treasury, now U.S. Secretary of State)
John Sweeney (AFL-CIO)
John Manley (Canadian Minister of Industry)
Javier Solana (secretary-general of NATO)
Lara Resende (formerly with National Development
Bank of Brazil)
Domingo Cavallo (former Economy Minister of
Argentina)
Andrei Kokoshin (former Russian First Minister of
Defense)
Serhiy Holovaty (Ukrainian Parliament)
Rudolf Scharping (German Minister of Defense)
John Deutch (MIT professor, former director of U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency)
James Wolfensohn (president of World Bank)
Stanley Fischer (International Monetary Fund)
Toyoo Gyohten (Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi)
Jim Leach (chairman of U.S. House Banking and
Financial Services Committee
Programs and speeches from the past several meetings are available on the Trilateral Commission website.
Funds for the Commission's initial meetings in the 1970s were provided by David Rockefeller, David Packard, George Franklin, the Kettering Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Thyssen Foundation, General Motors, Sears Roebuck, Caterpillar, Deere, Exxon, Texas Instruments, Coca Cola, Time, CBS, Wells Fargo Bank, Honeywell, Cargill, Cummins Engine, Kaiser Resources, Bechtel, Weyerhaeuser, and others, and funding continues to come from corporations and corporate foundations.
Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE)
"While the ERT [the European Roundtable of Industrialists] subtly masterminds its grand vision of Europe in collaboration with the European Commission, another Brussels-based European lobby group is busy implementing the less glamorous but equally critical details. Whereas ERT is quietly proactive, UNICE is a reactive, detail-obsessed, supremely efficient lobby machine. Its working groups dissect every proposal, regulation, directive and article emerging from Brussels before spitting influential position papers back into the policy-making apparatus. Its efforts often result in the adoption of business-friendly initiatives, and the blockage of more socially or environmental progressive legislation."
UNICE was created in 1958 and now represents 34 business federations from 27 European countries (there is a list of them in the UNICE website). UNICE's mission is "to promote the common professional interests of the firms represented by its members; to inform the decision-making process at the European level so that policies and legislative proposals which affect business in Europe take account of companies' needs; and to represent its members in the dialogue between social partners enshrined in the Treaty on European Union."
UNICE's ten priorities:
European competitiveness, a pre-condition for
achieving healthy growth and a high-level of employment;
Completion and implementation of the single market,
to the benefit of 370 million consumers;
Long-term stability of economic and monetary union
with a sound single currency;
A policy of open competition in the Union, offering
greater choices and lower prices;
Liberalisation of world trade by strengthening the
multilateral trading system, based on fair and clear rules;
Enlargement of the European Union to increase
prosperity in the entire European continent;
Better-quality legislation in order to minimise
costs and constraints which are particularly harmful to the development of
small and medium-sized enterprises;
The promotion of entrepreneurship and the definition
of social policies based on economic realities and structural reforms (lower
taxation, more efficient public services, and more flexible labour markets);
Sustainable development through reconciling
environmental protection while stimulating the dynamism of European industry;
Innovation and life-long learning - through targeted
policies for research, education and training, protection of intellectual
property etc. - in order to meet the challenges of the information and
learning society
There are UNICE working groups on:
Economic & Financial Affairs (Competitiveness,
Economic and Monetary Union, Financial Services).
External Relations (Customs Legislation, WTO, Trade
and Environment, Market Access, Export Credit Insurance).
Industrial Affairs (Environment, Water, Waste, Air
Quality, Eco-Labeling, Transport, Energy, Telecommunications, Technical
Barriers to Trade).
Social Affairs (Education and Training, Health and
Safety at Work, Industrial Relations, Labour Market)
Company Affairs (Trade & Competition, State Aid,
Cost Benefit Analysis, International Business Practices, Environmental
Liability, Commercial and Judicial Law, Consumer/Marketing, Intellectual
Property Policy, Patents, Biotechnology).
UNICE secretary-general Dirk Hudig was formerly a government relations executive with ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). UNICE president Georges Jacobs was formerly with the IMF and the Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical corporation UCB. Former UNICE president Francois Perigot was the head of Unilever France and AMUE (Association for Monetary Union in Europe).
UNICE works with ERT, the EU Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce, with the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, and with the major industry associations in Europe. UNICE's bias towards the biggest corporations resulted in a threat by the European Union for Artisans and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (UEAPME) to sue UNICE in order to win a place in the European Union's Social Dialogue, which included UNICE and the major trade unions.
UNICE has a Brussels staff of forty, and a network of policy analysts divided into sixty working groups dealing with European business issues, including competitiveness, the Single Market, and economic and monetary union. UNICE favors tax reductions for industry, reduced public spending on pensions, health and welfare, deregulation of trade and investment, enlargement of the European Union to include the 100 million consumers in eastern Europe, and more subsidies for industrial infrastructure.
United Nations
The United Nations was created in 1945 by 51 founding nations as an international institution to maintain peace and security, solve economic and social problems, and promote human rights.
The Security Council, which has veto power over the decisions of the UN General Assembly, is dominated by its five permanent members (the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China); ten additional members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. Decisions on "substantive" matters require the concurring votes of all five permanent members, thus giving each of them veto power.
The UN has dozens of programs and agencies which provide forums for issues ranging from disaster relief and refugees, food, population, the environment, education, labor, trade and development, health, women and children. The International Court of Justice at the Hague (Netherlands) is the UN's official judicial organ.
The Security Council has made selective use of UN sanctions and "peace-keeping" forces in the Persian Gulf, Bosnian, and other conflicts, favoring corporate interests in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1990s, the U.S., led by Senator Jesse Helms, refused to pay its UN dues, further ensuring U.S. dominance (and the UN's impotence); the U.S. owes more than $1 billion. U.S. representatives to the UN have included such pro-business leaders as Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1953-60), George W. Ball (1968), George Bush (1971-73), Andrew Young (1977-79), Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (1981-85), and Thomas Pickering (1989-92).
Corporate influence over the UN
In 1986, a draft UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations called for corporations to comply with the laws of the countries within which they operated, and to refrain from lobbying their home country to influence the host nation's policies. Although the Code would not have been binding on corporations, corporations and the U.S. government pushed for further weakening of the Code, and in 1993, the UN's Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) itself was dismantled. The UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was identified as the new UN department for work on corporations-but UNCTAD's focus is not to find ways to control corporations, but to stimulate corporate investment in the Third World.
UNCTAD was established in 1964 to promote economic growth and development. In the 1980s, UNCTAD provided a forum for its member countries to negotiate international agreements on trade in commodities, which was folded into GATT. UNCTAD helps developing nations "take advantage" of liberalized trade under GATT and WTO, and administers a fund created to integrate developing nations into the world economy. Encouragement of corporate investment has become central to UNCTAD's work.
UNCTAD provided technical assistance to developing countries in connection with the GATT Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, helps developing countries find ways to "manage" their debts to the North, and organized a Partners for Development summit meeting in November 1998 to facilitate cooperation between corporations, banks, and development agencies. More than 2,700 representatives from 172 countries attended, and agreements were reached on public-private partnerships, investment promotion, agricultural commodities, sustainable development, and biodiversity.
The UN Development Program works "to achieve faster economic growth and better standards of living" by providing grants and technical assistance in 150 countries and working with forty international agencies. According to its 1994 executive board decision, sustainable development is the UNDP's guiding principle.
The UN Development Program's 1999 Human Development Report (entitled Globalization With A Human Face) called for "tougher rules on global governance, including principles of performance for multinationals on labour standards, fair trade and environmental protection, [which] are needed to counter the negative effects of globalisation on the poorest nations," and called for the WTO to have "anti-monopoly functions over the activities of multinational corporations." ICC Secretary-General Maria Cattaui responded by declaring that the UNDP was on "'the wrong track in calling for a mandatory code of conduct for multinationals.' Such binding rules, she argued, 'would put the clock back to a bygone era... Governments in the poorer countries now compete to create a hospitable climate for foreign direct investment,' she concluded and referred to the ICC's cooperation with [UN Secretary-General Kofi] Annan and the UN as an example that 'times and perceptions have changed.'"
Annan has declared that "people are poor not because of too much globalisation but too little," and has admitted that "a fundamental shift has occurred in recent years in the attitude of the United Nations towards the private sector. Confrontation has taken a back seat to cooperation. Polemics have given way to partnerships... it is no surprise that the United Nations and the private sector are joining forces. The voice of business is now heard in United Nations policy debates."
In July 2000, a "Global Compact" was announced by Annan after meeting with a delegation from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), including representatives from the energy corporation Norsk Hydro, mining giant Rio Tinto, consumer products leader Unilever, Shell, industrial and military electronics contractor Siemens, and other major corporations.
"Annan described this new international covenant between the UN and business as 'the most sensible way forward to safeguard open markets while at the same time creating a human face for the global economy.' Despite the flawed social and environmental records of involved corporations including Rio Tinto, Siemens and Norsk Hydro, this agreement on 'global corporate citizenship' is completely non-binding, with no enforcement mechanisms whatsoever. At a time when global economic deregulation has made mandatory and enforceable international rules for corporate behaviour more necessary than ever, the Global Compact is a questionable initiative."
The Global Compact was first proposed by Annan at the January 1999 World Economic Forum in Davos, because of his "fear that, if we do not act, there may be a threat to the open global market, and especially to the multilateral trade regime." In a June 1998 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in June 1998, UN Secretary-General Annan had warned that,
"As you know, globalisation is under intense pressure. And business is in the line of fire, seen by many as not doing enough in the areas of environment, labour standards and human rights. This may not seem fair, but it is a perception that will not go away unless business is seen to be committed to global corporate citizenship. The Global Compact offers a reasonable way out of this impasse."
In their joint statement announcing the Global Compact, the UN and the ICC called for a new round of international trade negotiations because it would "contribute to reinforcing the economic momentum generated by trade liberalisation"-precisely the reason 1,200 groups from around the world had called for a comprehensive review of existing trade agreements before any new negotiations were undertaken.
Implementation of the Global Compact is to be facilitated by the UN Secretary-General, the International Labour Organisation, the UN Environment Programme, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Journalists reported that "privately, UN officials admit that they will not be able to check if companies do respect the voluntary agreement on good practice" and that "Neither UN officials nor private sector leaders were able to say how their new-found cooperation would translate into practice when dealing with multinationals accused of degrading the environment or working with governments violating human or labour rights."
U.S. Chamber of CommerceWe haven't done anything for business this week-but it is only Monday morning. -- President Lyndon Johnson, speech to U.S. Chamber of Commerce, April 27, 1964
"If you go to [a regulatory] agency first, don't be too pessimistic if they can't solve your problem there. If they don't, that's what the task force is for. Two weeks ago [a group] showed up and I asked if they had a problem. They said they did, and we made a couple phone calls and straightened it out, alerted the top people at the agency that there was a little hanky-panky going on at the bottom of the agency, and it was cleared up very rapidly-so the system does work if you use it as a sort of an appeal. We can act as a double check on the agency that you might encounter problems with." -- C. Boyden Gray (counsel to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Regulatory Relief), in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce in the early 1980s.
Often called the largest business association in the world, the Chamber of Commerce claims to represents three million companies, 3,000 state and local chambers of commerce, 830 business associations, and 87 American Chambers of Commerce in over 40 countries.
Local chambers of commerce were being established in the United States before 1800, and many of them joined the United States Chamber of Commerce when it was created in 1912. The U.S. Chamber was established (at the suggestion of President Taft) to support uniform business and trade policies and standards. In the post-World War II era the Chamber was not very active politically, instead sponsoring workshops on the evils of Communism. However, the Chamber was revitalized in the 1970s as its membership and budget grew several-fold and it relocated to Washington, DC. By 1980, the Chamber's budget was $55 million and it had 45 full-time lobbyists.
The Chamber donates a substantial portion of its current $70 million budget to politicians. The Chamber's political action committee (PAC) donated more than $10 million to federal candidates in 1997-98, 90 percent of it to Republicans, and spent another $17 million on lobbying in 1998.
The Chamber's structure includes policy committees, councils, task forces, and a staff of 1,200 governed by a 100-member board of directors.
The Chamber has Councils devoted to Small Business, Employee Benefits, Environment and Energy, Food and Agriculture, International Policy, Labor Relations, Regulatory Affairs, Taxation, Technology Policy, Transportation Infrastructure, and other issues.
Task forces deal with Antitrust, Electricity Deregulation, Export Finance, Foreign Commercial Relations, Global Telecommunications, Privatization, Social Security, Water Works, and the World Trade Organization.
The Chamber has a National Chamber Litigation Center to take legal action against environmental, workplace, and consumer regulations, and an Institute for Legal Reform to attack the ability of agencies and citizens to hold corporations accountable in courts of law. As the Chamber's website says,
"When persuasion, lobbying and negotiation fail, American business has one more recourse - the U.S. Chamber's law firm, the National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC). The Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber, is leading the fight against a handful of lawyers who are sucking the vitality out of American business through a wave of frivolous class action lawsuits."
Since 1977, the Litigation Center (a tax-exempt affiliate and legal arm of the Chamber) has participated in nearly 600 lawsuits.
The Institute for Legal Reform, also tax-exempt, was created in 1998 "to reduce excessive and frivolous litigation while restoring fairness and balance to the nation's civil justice system. First tobacco. Then guns, followed by lead paint. What industry will be the next target of lawsuits?" The Institute supports legislation such as the Litigation Fairness Act (S. 1269/H.R. 2597), which would prevent the government from filing lawsuits against corporations, as it has in the case of the tobacco, gun, and lead paint industries, and the Interstate Class Action Jurisdiction Act (HR 1875/ S 353), which would require more class action lawsuits against corporations to be heard in federal court rather than in State courts.
The Chamber website claims that 96 percent of its members are businesses with less than 100 employees. "No company is too small-or too big-to be a U.S. Chamber member. That's because U.S. Chamber members share a common goal: our fight for free enterprise." The Chamber then lists the kinds of members it has, as if they were equal in stature and power: "The neighborhood dry cleaner. The state chamber of commerce. A Fortune 500 company. A trade association. Home based-business."
While the Chamber does have grassroots support, its policies tend to mirror the positions of its largest corporate members. Other organizations, including the conservative National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), accuse the Chamber of being too big-business oriented. In 1983, when even Ronald Reagan realized tax increases were inevitable, the White House lobbied 12,000 state and local chambers of commerce, asking them to ignore the U.S. Chamber's calls to reject all tax increases.
The Chamber seeks to reduce taxes and welfare payments (called welfare "reform"), to limit the liability of corporations which are sued (called "tort reform"), and to influence workplace issues such as labor organizing, pensions, and health care benefits, and pushes for free trade.
The Chamber's TradeRoots program's motto is "Growing Prosperity in America and the World." TradeRoots works to build a "winning trade coalition in the U.S. Congress and stop the anti-trade protectionism." To do this, TradeRoots aims to "Shore up and sustain pro-trade coalitions at the grassroots level in 66 congressional districts in 27 states to work for swift passage of China PNTR and other vital trade initiatives; Identify and mobilize community leaders as pro-trade advocates in each district; Partner with the governor of each state to communicate the local benefits of trade; Tell our success stories through local media, using a vigorous communications campaign; and, Establish a one-stop information resource on trade-on the web and off the web-for everything from state and local trade statistics to success stories." TradeRoots and the U.S. Department of Commerce are co-sponsoring a two-day program to "give chamber executives the tools needed to make their members global business leaders."
The National Chamber Foundation was created in the 1960s to fund research and promote a favorable image of business in the public eye. The Foundation now co-sponsors an annual "economic summit" in Washington DC with the World Economic Forum (see profile of WEF below); the WEF-NCF meeting in May 2000 was attended by 300 participants from more than 40 nations.
In 1999, the Chamber of Commerce hosted a "Brownfields to American Dream Fields" conference to facilitate the "revitalization" of brownfields (abandoned-and often toxic- manufacturing sites) into recreational facilities. A highlight of the event was the "Let's Make a Deal session, where cities presented their available brownfield sites to developers, the financial community, and government agencies." In June 2000, the Chamber and AIG Environmental (an insurance corporation) hosted a follow-up conference entitled "Let's Make It Happen" to promote "creative public and private partnerships." These "partnerships often are deals wherein the public buys and cleans up the toxic sites abandoned by corporations.
Public-private partnerships are so important that the Chamber has established a Center for Corporate Citizenship (CCC) to facilitate them. The CCC "fosters corporate citizenship by celebrating corporate achievements, developing and sharing public policy recommendations, documenting and publicizing corporate best practices, and facilitating public-private sector partnerships. Sponsors include Texaco, Cargill, Conoco, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi Motors America, State Farm Insurance, Unocal, the American Apparel Manufacturers Association, the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, and the U.S. Council for International Business-clearly businesses that are in great need of subsidies in the form of public-private partnerships. In September 2000, the CCC held a conference on Corporate Citizenship and the Future of Private-Public Cooperation to "find out how to improve the climate for public-private cooperation, manage the contributions and expectations of partners, and identify opportunities for collaboration between business, government and non-profits." This was followed in October by the "First Annual Military Community Summit" to be followed by a "gala event" sponsored by the CCC.
The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) is an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that receives funding from at least two U.S. government agencies (the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Information Agency) as well as from private organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy. CIPE promotes economic "reform," private enterprise, and "democratic consolidation" around the world. CIPE "aggressively spreads a pro-business, pro-freedom message and administers programs to train future leaders in emerging democracies around the world."
Meetings
September 11-13, 2000, International Trade Leadership Program, Washington, DC
September 13, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit,
Houston, TX
October 3, 2000, Techiesday, Washington, DC
October 4, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit, Salt
Lake City, UT
October 26, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit,
Miami, FL
November 8, 2000, NCF/Hudson Institute Election Impact: Trade, Taxes & the
Economy, Washington DC
November 10, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit,
Detroit, MI
November 30, 2000, E-commerce USA, Miami, FL
December 5, 2000, E-commerce Americas, Mexico City,
Mexico
December 5-6, 2000, Commercial Aviation Summit,
Washington, DC
December 13, 2000, E-Commerce USA, Fort Worth, TX
February 2001(tentative), E-Commerce Europe, London,
England
April 4-5, 2001, World Economic Forum, USA Meeting,
Washington, DC
May 18-19, 2001, Annual Board Meeting and Retreat,
Naples, FL
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