Chuck Grassley: “I do think he has brought up an issue of transparency, and it deals with NAFTA. On all agreements, particularly WTO…”

“I do think he has brought up an issue of transparency, and it deals with NAFTA. On all agreements, particularly WTO agreements, there has been a big concern about the process not being transparent enough. Senator Baucus and I, in the Finance Committee, have spoken about the necessity for doing this in several different venues. We have spoken with people from the European Community about it. We believe the process of the WTO, for instance, should be very much more transparent than it has been in the past. So the issue of transparency is one that does fall on acceptable ears in a very general sense, not necessarily related to the amendment of the Senator from North Dakota but in a very general sense with most of us in the Congress of the United States. Where we have run into most of the opposition is from the European Community. We have also had a lot of the developing nations of the world that are members of the World Trade Organization be highly in favor of more transparency. The issue of transparency was the basis for a lot of the protests in Seattle, and since then there has been a real determined look at the process.”