According to a letter signed by nine US senators and five Congress members, US Trade Representative, Mickey Kantor, has pledged that should negotiations fail, he would file a formal GATT complaint to stop an EU ban on the import of wild animal furs from the US. The letter is a summary of the senators and congressmen’s meeting with Kantor on July 1st, and is obviously designed to ensure that Kantor sticks to his guns. Should this happen, it will involve a striking exchange of roles and argumentation between the US and the EU at the international trade tribunal.

At present it is the EU that is seeking shelter under the GATT to prevent the US from swinging the stick of closing its markets . The US has banned the import of dolphin products that do not derive from dolphins caught in accordance with the US dolphin- safe standard. The ban only applies to tuna from the Eastern Tropical Pacific. The EU is not involved in this fishery, but has processing plants that use tuna from the designated area. The GATT Panel has supported the EU.

The EU’s own use of the trade stick aims at abolishing the use of the leghold trap in fur-bearing animal hunts in the EU and elsewhere . A regulation to come into effect on Jan 1, 1996, will ban the import of furs from countries that do not ban such traps. One of the aims of this regulation is, according to the European Commission, to meet the moral objection of the European public to the leghold trap. In their letter to Mickey Kantor, the 14 members of the US Senate and Congress state that Kantor agreed ... that the EU fur regulation is inconsistent with the GATT.

And animal welfare organisations agree with him, too: If the same rationale as in the tuna/dolphin care were to be applied to the proposed EU ban on furs imported from nations still permitting the use of the leghold trap, then it seems likely that this measure will be declared GATT illegal, it says in a report by the organisation GATT and Animal Protection , a group established by several European animal welfare organisations to address the questions of trade and animal welfare. They are not at all satisfied with the present GATT and even less so with the Uruguay round and the coming WTO, that will make it even more difficult for moral crusaders to swing their trade sticks .

Moral Authority
The founding father of the legislation behind the US trade restrictions is Gerry Studs, chairman of the House Merchant Marine Committee. His statement gives impetus to the suspicion that it is not only the welfare of dolphins that is being taken care of: This Bill (the International Dolphin Conservation Act of 1992) protects not only the dolphins, but also more than 7,000 American workers employed in dolphin-safe tuna canneries.

The EU has asked the GATT Panel to evaluate the legality of the US use of the trade stick . The Panel declared that US restrictions on the import of tuna violates the GATT and affirms thus the conclusion from a 1991 panel report from an almost identical dispute between the USA and Mexico. Mexico did not press the matter before the GATT Council, which must finalize all GATT rulings, because of the then ongoing NAFTA negotiations.

Nine countries, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Thailand, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Columbia and El Salvador participated in the Panel proceedings as third parties. They all expressed a view supporting the GATT Panel’s reading of the treaty. New Zealand, a country that internationally leads the van for the protection of marine mammals, expresses sympathy for the intentions of the US trade restrictions, but fears the consequences: It would mean that a party (to the GATT) could in effect prescribe the environmental policies other countries had to adopt to trade with it.

Humour and Altruism
In an editorial (6/9/94) commenting on the Panel report, the Detroit Free Press states that Dolphins are mammals of arching grace and beauty, of intriguing intelligence and behaviour. They seem to many people to embody near-human traits of loyalty, affection, humour and altruism - more altruism than a GATT bureaucrat anyway. The editorial is, however, able to find at least one positive element in the situation: The good news is that the US does not have to abide by the anti-dolphin decision, which requires consent of all parties (to the treaty) to be enforced. And the US has indeed made use of this opportunity to block the adoption of the Panel’s report.

Against all the rules, US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor published the Panel’s report before the GATT Council had concluded it. He said that his aim was to involve environmentalist organisations and create pressure for a rehearing. He also wanted environmentalist organisations to be given admission to GATT Council meetings.