Susan Ariel Aaronson, Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. xix + 264 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-472-11212-0.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Alfred E. Eckes, Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University.

Since the Seattle riots in December 1999 disrupted efforts to launch a new round of multilateral negotiations under auspices of the World Trade Organization, government and corporate efforts to advance the trade liberalization agenda have stalled. In this timely book, business historian Susan Aaronson, who is a senior fellow with the National Policy Association, explains how a global network of individuals and nongovernmental organizations came to distrust the elitist free-trade program and mobilized successfully to block its advance.

Aaronson presents her research and conclusions in seven chapters. She explains first how trade critics redefined the terms of debate to include non-economic criteria -- labor standards, the environment, and food safety. Then, she offers a brief history of American protectionism from 1789 to the 1960s. Here Aaronson shows that the debate over trade policy was never simply about protecting industries. She argues that social and human rights concerns have been part of the trade debate since the 1790s. Subsequent chapters indicate how GATT came to intersect with the regulatory social compact, how new rationales for protection emerged in the 1980s as business turned to a deregulatory agenda, and how public debates in Canada on a free trade agreement influenced later reactions in Canada and the U.S. to NAFTA. Finally she considers how the debate over the Uruguay Round agreements, establishing the WTO, sharpened public divisions and further educated activists about the relationships between trade agreements and other policy goals. Aaronson correctly notes that the trade critics are not protectionists in the traditional sense of wishing to protect specific industries from import competition. Rather, their goals are political. "They want to preserve national regulations that protect consumers, workers, and the environment, but they also want to protect their political influence over such regulations" (p. 177). She observes that the critics are strange bedfellows. Some are liberals eager to regulate national markets -- such as Citizen Trade Watch, Friends of the Earth, and organized labor. Others are nationalists, like the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, determined to defend sovereignty and freedom of action.

The activists succeeded, Aaronson says, because they shared a three-pronged strategy. They constructed formal and informal alliances -- particularly among likeminded individuals in Canada, Mexico and the United States and among activists in WTO member countries. They mobilized individuals around the world using new communications technologies, particularly the internet and fax communications. As they energized a worldwide network, business and corporate sponsors of trade liberalization continued to employ an "inside the Beltway strategy," one that focused on influencing key members of Congress. And, third, Aaronson says the critics successfully used old-fashioned tactics (such as consumer boycotts and teach-ins) to rally and educate their supporters.

What impact have the activists had? Aaronson cites the NAFTA labor and environmental side agreements, and increasing efforts of the WTO, the World Bank and other international agencies to reach out and engage their critics in discussion. Most of all, she says that the critics have stimulated discussions about NAFTA, GATT and global economic interdependence through demonstrations, teach-ins, and forums in the U.S. and around the world. They have put trade on the news media's agenda.

This is a stimulating book and it certainly helps to inform the public and scholars about the roots of ongoing trade debate. In particular, Aaronson is to be commended for looking behind the slogans "protectionism" and "free trade" and showing that the debate is more complex and variegated than many editorial writers seem to think. She conducted over seventy interviews with activists, academics, journalists and government officials but not, surprisingly, with business leaders and corporate lobbyists. The result is a somewhat unidimensional account.

On at least one major issue, Aaronson's "lost history" is incomplete. She concludes that U.S. trade activism in the 1990s "came from Canada" (p. 110), and grew out of debates over the U.S.- Canada bilateral free trade agreement. In fact, the Seattle demonstrations had their genesis far more in efforts of a no-name coalition of U.S. interest groups and nongovernmental organizations to defeat NAFTA, block U.S. accession to the WTO, and thwart efforts to renew fast-track trade negotiating authority for President Clinton. Concerned that those directing U.S. trade policy were out of touch with grassroots concerns, representatives of organized labor, environmentalists, consumer groups, conservatives, congressional staffers, and others formed a loose coalition and began meeting regularly on Capitol Hill in 1991. In the aftermath of the Cold War, which long had divided liberals and conservatives, members of this group quickly established new friendships and shared concerns about the consequences of open borders on the American nation and its citizens. After defeats on NAFTA and the WTO, it was apparent that the group lacked the financial resources to beat big business lobbyists in the corridors of power. They simply could not buy votes the way President Clinton and U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor did to pass NAFTA.

To change public policy, some of the coalition perceived that they needed to take the battle to the streets and thus present their case to the world's media. The rest is familiar history. The battle of Seattle ricocheted around the world -- to Bangkok, Prague, Davos, Quebec City, and Genoa. The proliferation and intensification of these protests suggests that elected officials have yet to devise a successful response to activists and to re-establish democratic consent for trade liberalization.

Aaronson's book, while certainly not the last word on this evolving topic, offers scholars and the interested public a valuable introduction to the origins and complexities of contemporary trade protests.

Alfred Eckes is Ohio Eminent Research Professor in Contemporary History at Ohio University. A former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission, he is completing a book with Thomas Zeiler on "Globalization and the American Century."