Sherrod Brown: “next month, the world's power brokers are going to meet in Seattle so they can kick off a new round of trade talks for…”

“next month, the world's power brokers are going to meet in Seattle so they can kick off a new round of trade talks for the World Trade Organization. Although one will not learn much about the WTO summit from television news casters or read about it on the front pages of newspapers, there are few events this year that will be more important to workers in Ohio and around the world. While the WTO corporate supporters and allies in Washington see the Seattle negotiations as a fresh opportunity to completely deregulate the international economy, the truth is that their agenda has systematically gutted our worker, consumer, and environmental protections that we have fought for in this body, and deliberately usurped the rights of individual nations to make their own laws, especially when those laws protect the environment and especially when those laws protect workers. Mr. Speaker, a report 'Whose Trade Organization,' written by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch dramatically demonstrates why the WTO requires fundamental change before the bureaucrats in Seattle take us down another road of trade negotiations.”