Negotiating Cultural Space in the Global Economy

In recent years, international trade agreements have limited the ability of states to pursue policies to preserve or promote domestic popular culture. Frustrated by this trend, several countries, most notably France and Canada, have been pushing the issue at the international level, arguing that culture should not be left to the marketplace and that governments should be free to regulate as they wish in this field. This position has brought them into direct conflict with the government of the United States, which emphasizes open markets, sees popular culture as commodity, and is determined to defend US economic interests, which are increasingly tied to exports of entertainment products. The focus of the debate has shifted since the mid19905 from exception in trade agreements to separate convention that would protect cultural diversity, negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). On 1 October 2003, the United States rejoined UNESCO, which, only days later, decided to begin drafting a convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions. Despite widespread international support for such an agreement, however, US officials have argued against it, using philosophical arguments about human rights to defend their country's commercial interests. American delegates to the October 2005 UNESCO general conference will likely not agree to any text that aims to override the provisions of international trade agreements and thus limit US exports of cultural products.THE CULTURE-TRADE QUANDARYThe culture-trade quandary-the dilemma of how to maintain cultural policies in world where trade is increasingly liberalized-dates to the early post-war years. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of 1947 established framework for member countries to reduce tariffs gradually on wide range of products. The agreement contained two cultural exemptions, one allowing screen quotas for domestic films and another excepting national treasures of artistic, historic or archaeological value.In the years after the agreement was reached, many countries introduced policies to support domestic radio and television, sectors not mentioned in the GATT text. They argued that broadcasting was not good and was therefore not subject to GATT rules. The United States insisted that these measures were protectionist and violated the agreement. In 1961, the United States asked the GATT organization to investigate quotas in several countries, but the panel created to look into the dispute was unable to reach an agreement. Similarly, the US objected to the European Union's 1989 television without frontiers directive, which calls for European broadcasters to reserve majority of their transmission time for European programs. Again, the US claimed that the measure violated the GATT agreement; again, it pursued the matter with the notoriously ineffective GATT, which was unable to resolve the dispute.The conflict was to be settled in the Uruguay round of trade negotiations, which ran from September 1986 to December 1993. From the start, some states wanted the agreement to include separate annex that would outline special treatment for audiovisual services. When it became clear that the US would not accept this position, France began to push for exception, clause that would explicitly leave cinema and other audiovisual works off the list of sectors covered by the new general agreement on trade in services (GATS). In the final months of negotiations, the French position was taken up by the European Union, which acts on behalf of its member countries in trade negotiations, and by several other countries, including Canada, India, and Australia. The United States, however, refused to accept any exemption, seeing cinema and other forms of popular culture as commodities. The entire round of negotiations came close to collapse over this single issue. …