#wto

#wto

"We worked hard," WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, adding that the US and Brazil in particular "need more time" to work out their differences over the agreement to impose levies on cross-border online orders.

In late November and early December 1999, the World Trade Organization convened in Seattle for a round of conferences and negotiations. Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets to meet them, including labor activists alarmed by the post-NAFTA landscape of the US, as well as environmentalists dismayed at eroding standards of ecological care under the kinds of agreements the WTO was arranging. They in turn encountered a police response more vicious than many anticipated, particularly once the protests threatened to shut down the conference.