Byron Dorgan: “last week we were all witnesses to headlines in the newspapers about a meeting held in Quebec City, Canada. The…”

“last week we were all witnesses to headlines in the newspapers about a meeting held in Quebec City, Canada. The newspaper headlines talked about tear gas, chain link fences, police lines, demonstrators, 30,000 people marching down streets. It also discussed anarchists. What is this all about, 30,000 people demonstrating in the streets of a major city in our hemisphere? It is about international trade. The same sort of thing happened in Seattle a year and a half ago. The future WTO ministerial meeting will be held not in a major city but in a place called Qatar. Why? Because no city wanted to host it, as I understand it. They will have to even bring in cruise ships for hotel rooms. They feel if the ministers of trade from around the world can hold a meeting in an isolated place, no one will show up to protest their closed door meeting. Last week's demonstrations in Quebec City underscored again that world leaders are not going to hold trade talks without attention being paid to the issues concerns of the people and the problems related to global trade. It is not that global trade ought to be stopped. It is that global trade has marched relentlessly forward without the rules of trade keeping pace. There is a relentless accelerated march toward globalization. However our world leaders have not develop acceptable rules, so people demonstrate in the streets.”