Gst, does this help, in terms of what's going on in Seattle with the WTO?
<<Free (E-)Trade Talks Come to Seattle
The media looks to Seattle this week to cover the meeting of the World
Trade Organization - and the protests waiting to greet it in what is
being dubbed the "Battle for Seattle." Could anything that big land on
the home turf of Microsoft, Amazon.com and Real Networks without
getting a Net angle? No way. In preview pieces reporters predicted
that, in addition to labor rights and farm subsidies, e-commerce would
be one of the most contentious issues at the meeting, which will kick
off a three-year round of trade negotiations.
On Friday, Reuters' Adrian Croft reported from Brussels that Bernard
Vergnes, chairman of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa, was
urging the WTO to make permanent its ban on tariffs for goods
distributed electronically, like software and music. A few years ago,
e-distributors were asking legislators for moratoriums on taxes and
tariffs to give a fledgling industry the chance to get off the ground.
Now that it's off the ground, it looks like the distributors would
still rather skip those pesky taxes and tariffs, as long as no one
minds. There was something almost colonial in Vergnes' patronizing
remark that while Europe was "partially in agreement" with the U.S. on
banning e-tariffs, some developing countries "probably don't
understand fully the benefits they could get from a very open and very
free e-commerce environment." Perhaps Microsoft could send
missionaries to enlighten them.
August Cole's report on CBS MarketWatch painted a Europe that's out of
line with laissez-faire America when it comes to the regulation of
e-commerce. Cole quotes Harry Freeman, director of the Coalition of
Service Industries, saying "The American ... approach is don't
regulate it unless you have to, or regulate it at a minimum. The
European tradition is how do you regulate it." Must be connected with
that social-safety-net business.
In its preview piece on the talks and the protests, the Seattle Times
estimated that online sales would top $5 trillion by 2005, a third of
it outside the U.S. This year's holiday shopping will be somewhere
between $4 billion and $12 billion, according to CBS MarketWatch's
Emily Church, and a small percentage of that gift-giving clicking will
come from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In his weekly radio address,
President Clinton announced that 4 million American families would
shop online this year, and "I intend to join them." The cookie file
after a presidential shopping session would make interesting holiday
reading indeed. - D.S.>> |
