The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others in order to foster cooperation between the U.S., Europe, and Japan in shaping governmental and non-governmental action to renovate the international system shaped after World War II. Recently focii have been globalization and labor markets, energy security, and "managing the international system."

Members who take up positions in their national governments are supposed to give up their Trilateral Commission membership "to preserve the Commission's unofficial character." Likewise, the consensus reached at Trilateral meetings is also informal and broad. As the Commission's website explains,

"The Trilateral Commission does not adopt positions at its annual meetings agreed to by all participating members. The membership is too large and diverse for detailed agreement to be reached on a disputed issue. Differences are sometimes acute, resulting in unresolved debate. Members return home from the annual meeting with a variety of freshly informed perspectives on issues of concern with which they may or may not agree, but by which their own thinking is generally sharpened. The team of authors may reach detailed agreement on the issues addressed in particular task force reports. The Chairmen have sometimes issued statements at the conclusion of an annual meeting putting forward a few main themes and conclusions from the discussions."

Membership currently includes about 335 businessmen, labor union leaders, academics, media executives, and politicians from North America, Western Europe, and Japan, led by three regional chairmen, currently:

Paul Volcker (former chairman of U.S. Federal Reserve Bank).

Otto Graf Lambsdorff (German Minister of Economics, German Bundestag 1972-98, Foundation Initiative of German

Enterprises, Liberal International).

Yotaro Kobayashi (Fuji Xerox, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Keizai Doyukai Japanese Association of Corporate Executive, Aspen Institute Japan, ABB Ltd.).

There is also an executive committee of 36, which currently includes executives from ABB, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Levi Strauss, and others.

The annual meeting of Trilateral Commission members, typically three days long, rotates among the three regions: 1996 Vancouver British Columbia in 1996, Tokyo in 1997, Berlin in 1998, Washington DC in 1999, and Tokyo in 2000. Roughly half of the members of the Trilateral Commission are likely to participate in any particular annual meeting. Each meeting also includes some participants from beyond the membership, including individuals from non-Trilateral countries.

"The program typically includes a few sessions devoted to current developments in each region, with special attention to the host country and region. Typically two sessions are framed by draft task force reports on particular issues, prepared by teams of authors from the three regions. Other sessions on key common issues are generally opened by a few panelists speaking from different perspectives. Luncheon and dinner sessions are often occasions for speeches by government leaders."

The regional groups within the Trilateral Commission carry on some activities of their own. The European group, with its office in Paris, has an annual weekend meeting each fall. The North American group, with its office in New York, occasionally gathers with a special speaker for a dinner or luncheon event-as does the Japanese group, with its office in Tokyo.

Speakers at the 1999 annual meeting in Washington, DC were a who's who of power, including:

 Robert Zoellick (Center for Strategic and International Studies and former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs)

Peter Sutherland (WTO/GATT, BP Amoco, Goldman Sachs, EC Commission)

Lawrence Summers (then U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, now U.S. Secretary of State)

John Sweeney (AFL-CIO)

John Manley (Canadian Minister of Industry)

Javier Solana (secretary-general of NATO)

Lara Resende (formerly with National Development Bank of Brazil)

Domingo Cavallo (former Economy Minister of Argentina)

Andrei Kokoshin (former Russian First Minister of Defense)

Serhiy Holovaty (Ukrainian Parliament)

Rudolf Scharping (German Minister of Defense)

John Deutch (MIT professor, former director of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency)

James Wolfensohn (president of World Bank)

Stanley Fischer (International Monetary Fund)

Toyoo Gyohten (Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi)

Jim Leach (chairman of U.S. House Banking and Financial Services Committee

Programs and speeches from the past several meetings are available on the Trilateral Commission website.

Funds for the Commission's initial meetings in the 1970s were provided by David Rockefeller, David Packard, George Franklin, the Kettering Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Thyssen Foundation, General Motors, Sears Roebuck, Caterpillar, Deere, Exxon, Texas Instruments, Coca Cola, Time, CBS, Wells Fargo Bank, Honeywell, Cargill, Cummins Engine, Kaiser Resources, Bechtel, Weyerhaeuser, and others, and funding continues to come from corporations and corporate foundations.

For More Information

Holly Sklar, editor, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (South End Press, 1980).

Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE)

 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium

Telephone: (+32 2) 237.65.11

Fax: (+32 2) 231.14.45

E-mail: main@unice.be 

www.unice.org

"While the ERT [the European Roundtable of Industrialists] subtly masterminds its grand vision of Europe in collaboration with the European Commission, another Brussels-based European lobby group is busy implementing the less glamorous but equally critical details. Whereas ERT is quietly proactive, UNICE is a reactive, detail-obsessed, supremely efficient lobby machine. Its working groups dissect every proposal, regulation, directive and article emerging from Brussels before spitting influential position papers back into the policy-making apparatus. Its efforts often result in the adoption of business-friendly initiatives, and the blockage of more socially or environmental progressive legislation."

UNICE was created in 1958 and now represents 34 business federations from 27 European countries (there is a list of them in the UNICE website). UNICE's mission is "to promote the common professional interests of the firms represented by its members; to inform the decision-making process at the European level so that policies and legislative proposals which affect business in Europe take account of companies' needs; and to represent its members in the dialogue between social partners enshrined in the Treaty on European Union."

UNICE's ten priorities:

European competitiveness, a pre-condition for achieving healthy growth and a high-level of employment;

Completion and implementation of the single market, to the benefit of 370 million consumers;

Long-term stability of economic and monetary union with a sound single currency;

A policy of open competition in the Union, offering greater choices and lower prices;

Liberalisation of world trade by strengthening the multilateral trading system, based on fair and clear rules;

Enlargement of the European Union to increase prosperity in the entire European continent;

Better-quality legislation in order to minimise costs and constraints which are particularly harmful to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises;

The promotion of entrepreneurship and the definition of social policies based on economic realities and structural reforms (lower taxation, more efficient public services, and more flexible labour markets);

Sustainable development through reconciling environmental protection while stimulating the dynamism of European industry;

Innovation and life-long learning - through targeted policies for research, education and training, protection of intellectual property etc. - in order to meet the challenges of the information and learning society

There are UNICE working groups on:

Economic & Financial Affairs (Competitiveness, Economic and Monetary Union, Financial Services).

External Relations (Customs Legislation, WTO, Trade and Environment, Market Access, Export Credit Insurance).

Industrial Affairs (Environment, Water, Waste, Air Quality, Eco-Labeling, Transport, Energy, Telecommunications, Technical Barriers to Trade).

Social Affairs (Education and Training, Health and Safety at Work, Industrial Relations, Labour Market)

Company Affairs (Trade & Competition, State Aid, Cost Benefit Analysis, International Business Practices, Environmental Liability, Commercial and Judicial Law, Consumer/Marketing, Intellectual Property Policy, Patents, Biotechnology).

UNICE secretary-general Dirk Hudig was formerly a government relations executive with ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). UNICE president Georges Jacobs was formerly with the IMF and the Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical corporation UCB. Former UNICE president Francois Perigot was the head of Unilever France and AMUE (Association for Monetary Union in Europe).

UNICE works with ERT, the EU Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce, with the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, and with the major industry associations in Europe. UNICE's bias towards the biggest corporations resulted in a threat by the European Union for Artisans and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (UEAPME) to sue UNICE in order to win a place in the European Union's Social Dialogue, which included UNICE and the major trade unions.

UNICE has a Brussels staff of forty, and a network of policy analysts divided into sixty working groups dealing with European business issues, including competitiveness, the Single Market, and economic and monetary union. UNICE favors tax reductions for industry, reduced public spending on pensions, health and welfare, deregulation of trade and investment, enlargement of the European Union to include the 100 million consumers in eastern Europe, and more subsidies for industrial infrastructure.

United Nations

Headquarters: New York NY 10017

Palaise des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

UN International Centre, A-1400 Vienna, Austria

www.un.org

The United Nations was created in 1945 by 51 founding nations as an international institution to maintain peace and security, solve economic and social problems, and promote human rights.

The Security Council, which has veto power over the decisions of the UN General Assembly, is dominated by its five permanent members (the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China); ten additional members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. Decisions on "substantive" matters require the concurring votes of all five permanent members, thus giving each of them veto power.

The UN has dozens of programs and agencies which provide forums for issues ranging from disaster relief and refugees, food, population, the environment, education, labor, trade and development, health, women and children. The International Court of Justice at the Hague (Netherlands) is the UN's official judicial organ.

The Security Council has made selective use of UN sanctions and "peace-keeping" forces in the Persian Gulf, Bosnian, and other conflicts, favoring corporate interests in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1990s, the U.S., led by Senator Jesse Helms, refused to pay its UN dues, further ensuring U.S. dominance (and the UN's impotence); the U.S. owes more than $1 billion. U.S. representatives to the UN have included such pro-business leaders as Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1953-60), George W. Ball (1968), George Bush (1971-73), Andrew Young (1977-79), Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (1981-85), and Thomas Pickering (1989-92).

Corporate influence over the UN

In 1986, a draft UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations called for corporations to comply with the laws of the countries within which they operated, and to refrain from lobbying their home country to influence the host nation's policies. Although the Code would not have been binding on corporations, corporations and the U.S. government pushed for further weakening of the Code, and in 1993, the UN's Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) itself was dismantled. The UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was identified as the new UN department for work on corporations-but UNCTAD's focus is not to find ways to control corporations, but to stimulate corporate investment in the Third World.

UNCTAD was established in 1964 to promote economic growth and development. In the 1980s, UNCTAD provided a forum for its member countries to negotiate international agreements on trade in commodities, which was folded into GATT. UNCTAD helps developing nations "take advantage" of liberalized trade under GATT and WTO, and administers a fund created to integrate developing nations into the world economy. Encouragement of corporate investment has become central to UNCTAD's work.

UNCTAD provided technical assistance to developing countries in connection with the GATT Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, helps developing countries find ways to "manage" their debts to the North, and organized a Partners for Development summit meeting in November 1998 to facilitate cooperation between corporations, banks, and development agencies. More than 2,700 representatives from 172 countries attended, and agreements were reached on public-private partnerships, investment promotion, agricultural commodities, sustainable development, and biodiversity.

The UN Development Program works "to achieve faster economic growth and better standards of living" by providing grants and technical assistance in 150 countries and working with forty international agencies. According to its 1994 executive board decision, sustainable development is the UNDP's guiding principle.

The UN Development Program's 1999 Human Development Report (entitled Globalization With A Human Face) called for "tougher rules on global governance, including principles of performance for multinationals on labour standards, fair trade and environmental protection, [which] are needed to counter the negative effects of globalisation on the poorest nations," and called for the WTO to have "anti-monopoly functions over the activities of multinational corporations." ICC Secretary-General Maria Cattaui responded by declaring that the UNDP was on "'the wrong track in calling for a mandatory code of conduct for multinationals.' Such binding rules, she argued, 'would put the clock back to a bygone era... Governments in the poorer countries now compete to create a hospitable climate for foreign direct investment,' she concluded and referred to the ICC's cooperation with [UN Secretary-General Kofi] Annan and the UN as an example that 'times and perceptions have changed.'"

Annan has declared that "people are poor not because of too much globalisation but too little," and has admitted that "a fundamental shift has occurred in recent years in the attitude of the United Nations towards the private sector. Confrontation has taken a back seat to cooperation. Polemics have given way to partnerships... it is no surprise that the United Nations and the private sector are joining forces. The voice of business is now heard in United Nations policy debates."

In July 2000, a "Global Compact" was announced by Annan after meeting with a delegation from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), including representatives from the energy corporation Norsk Hydro, mining giant Rio Tinto, consumer products leader Unilever, Shell, industrial and military electronics contractor Siemens, and other major corporations.

"Annan described this new international covenant between the UN and business as 'the most sensible way forward to safeguard open markets while at the same time creating a human face for the global economy.' Despite the flawed social and environmental records of involved corporations including Rio Tinto, Siemens and Norsk Hydro, this agreement on 'global corporate citizenship' is completely non-binding, with no enforcement mechanisms whatsoever. At a time when global economic deregulation has made mandatory and enforceable international rules for corporate behavior more necessary than ever, the Global Compact is a questionable initiative."

The Global Compact was first proposed by Annan at the January 1999 World Economic Forum in Davos, because of his "fear that, if we do not act, there may be a threat to the open global market, and especially to the multilateral trade regime." In a June 1998 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in June 1998, UN Secretary-General Annan had warned that,

"As you know, globalisation is under intense pressure. And business is in the line of fire, seen by many as not doing enough in the areas of environment, labour standards and human rights. This may not seem fair, but it is a perception that will not go away unless business is seen to be committed to global corporate citizenship. The Global Compact offers a reasonable way out of this impasse."

In their joint statement announcing the Global Compact, the UN and the ICC called for a new round of international trade negotiations because it would "contribute to reinforcing the economic momentum generated by trade liberalisation"-precisely the reason 1,200 groups from around the world had called for a comprehensive review of existing trade agreements before any new negotiations were undertaken.

Implementation of the Global Compact is to be facilitated by the UN Secretary-General, the International Labour Organisation, the UN Environment Programme, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Journalists reported that "privately, UN officials admit that they will not be able to check if companies do respect the voluntary agreement on good practice" and that "Neither UN officials nor private sector leaders were able to say how their new-found cooperation would translate into practice when dealing with multinationals accused of degrading the environment or working with governments violating human or labour rights."

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

1615 H Street NW

Washington DC 20062

Telephone: 202-659-6000

www.uschamber.com

We haven't done anything for business this week-but it is only Monday morning.
-- President Lyndon Johnson, speech to U.S. Chamber of Commerce, April 27, 1964

"If you go to [a regulatory] agency first, don't be too pessimistic if they can't solve your problem there. If they don't, that's what the task force is for. Two weeks ago [a group] showed up and I asked if they had a problem. They said they did, and we made a couple phone calls and straightened it out, alerted the top people at the agency that there was a little hanky-panky going on at the bottom of the agency, and it was cleared up very rapidly-so the system does work if you use it as a sort of an appeal. We can act as a double check on the agency that you might encounter problems with."
-- C. Boyden Gray (counsel to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Regulatory Relief),
in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce in the early 1980s.

Often called the largest business association in the world, the Chamber of Commerce claims to represents three million companies, 3,000 state and local chambers of commerce, 830 business associations, and 87 American Chambers of Commerce in over 40 countries.

Local chambers of commerce were being established in the United States before 1800, and many of them joined the United States Chamber of Commerce when it was created in 1912. The U.S. Chamber was established (at the suggestion of President Taft) to support uniform business and trade policies and standards. In the post-World War II era the Chamber was not very active politically, instead sponsoring workshops on the evils of Communism. However, the Chamber was revitalized in the 1970s as its membership and budget grew several-fold and it relocated to Washington, DC. By 1980, the Chamber's budget was $55 million and it had 45 full-time lobbyists.

The Chamber donates a substantial portion of its current $70 million budget to politicians. The Chamber's political action committee (PAC) donated more than $10 million to federal candidates in 1997-98, 90 percent of it to Republicans, and spent another $17 million on lobbying in 1998.

The Chamber's structure includes policy committees, councils, task forces, and a staff of 1,200 governed by a 100-member board of directors.

The Chamber has Councils devoted to Small Business, Employee Benefits, Environment and Energy, Food and Agriculture, International Policy, Labor Relations, Regulatory Affairs, Taxation, Technology Policy, Transportation Infrastructure, and other issues.

Task forces deal with Antitrust, Electricity Deregulation, Export Finance, Foreign Commercial Relations, Global Telecommunications, Privatization, Social Security, Water Works, and the World Trade Organization.

The Chamber has a National Chamber Litigation Center to take legal action against environmental, workplace, and consumer regulations, and an Institute for Legal Reform to attack the ability of agencies and citizens to hold corporations accountable in courts of law. As the Chamber's website says,

"When persuasion, lobbying and negotiation fail, American business has one more recourse - the U.S. Chamber's law firm, the National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC). The Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber, is leading the fight against a handful of lawyers who are sucking the vitality out of American business through a wave of frivolous class action lawsuits."

Since 1977, the Litigation Center (a tax-exempt affiliate and legal arm of the Chamber) has participated in nearly 600 lawsuits.

The Institute for Legal Reform, also tax-exempt, was created in 1998 "to reduce excessive and frivolous litigation while restoring fairness and balance to the nation's civil justice system. First tobacco. Then guns, followed by lead paint. What industry will be the next target of lawsuits?" The Institute supports legislation such as the Litigation Fairness Act (S. 1269/H.R. 2597), which would prevent the government from filing lawsuits against corporations, as it has in the case of the tobacco, gun, and lead paint industries, and the Interstate Class Action Jurisdiction Act (HR 1875/ S 353), which would require more class action lawsuits against corporations to be heard in federal court rather than in State courts.

The Chamber website claims that 96 percent of its members are businesses with less than 100 employees. "No company is too small-or too big-to be a U.S. Chamber member. That's because U.S. Chamber members share a common goal: our fight for free enterprise." The Chamber then lists the kinds of members it has, as if they were equal in stature and power: "The neighborhood dry cleaner. The state chamber of commerce. A Fortune 500 company. A trade association. Home based-business."

While the Chamber does have grassroots support, its policies tend to mirror the positions of its largest corporate members. Other organizations, including the conservative National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), accuse the Chamber of being too big-business oriented. In 1983, when even Ronald Reagan realized tax increases were inevitable, the White House lobbied 12,000 state and local chambers of commerce, asking them to ignore the U.S. Chamber's calls to reject all tax increases.

The Chamber seeks to reduce taxes and welfare payments (called welfare "reform"), to limit the liability of corporations which are sued (called "tort reform"), and to influence workplace issues such as labor organizing, pensions, and health care benefits, and pushes for free trade.

The Chamber's TradeRoots program's motto is "Growing Prosperity in America and the World." TradeRoots works to build a "winning trade coalition in the U.S. Congress and stop the anti-trade protectionism." To do this, TradeRoots aims to "Shore up and sustain pro-trade coalitions at the grassroots level in 66 congressional districts in 27 states to work for swift passage of China PNTR and other vital trade initiatives; Identify and mobilize community leaders as pro-trade advocates in each district; Partner with the governor of each state to communicate the local benefits of trade; Tell our success stories through local media, using a vigorous communications campaign; and, Establish a one-stop information resource on trade-on the web and off the web-for everything from state and local trade statistics to success stories." TradeRoots and the U.S. Department of Commerce are co-sponsoring a two-day program to "give chamber executives the tools needed to make their members global business leaders."

The National Chamber Foundation was created in the 1960s to fund research and promote a favorable image of business in the public eye. The Foundation now co-sponsors an annual "economic summit" in Washington DC with the World Economic Forum (see profile of WEF below); the WEF-NCF meeting in May 2000 was attended by 300 participants from more than 40 nations.

In 1999, the Chamber of Commerce hosted a "Brownfields to American Dream Fields" conference to facilitate the "revitalization" of brownfields (abandoned-and often toxic- manufacturing sites) into recreational facilities. A highlight of the event was the "Let's Make a Deal session, where cities presented their available brownfield sites to developers, the financial community, and government agencies." In June 2000, the Chamber and AIG Environmental (an insurance corporation) hosted a follow-up conference entitled "Let's Make It Happen" to promote "creative public and private partnerships." These "partnerships often are deals wherein the public buys and cleans up the toxic sites abandoned by corporations.

Public-private partnerships are so important that the Chamber has established a Center for Corporate Citizenship (CCC) to facilitate them. The CCC "fosters corporate citizenship by celebrating corporate achievements, developing and sharing public policy recommendations, documenting and publicizing corporate best practices, and facilitating public-private sector partnerships. Sponsors include Texaco, Cargill, Conoco, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi Motors America, State Farm Insurance, Unocal, the American Apparel Manufacturers Association, the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, and the U.S. Council for International Business-clearly businesses that are in great need of subsidies in the form of public-private partnerships. In September 2000, the CCC held a conference on Corporate Citizenship and the Future of Private-Public Cooperation to "find out how to improve the climate for public-private cooperation, manage the contributions and expectations of partners, and identify opportunities for collaboration between business, government and non-profits." This was followed in October by the "First Annual Military Community Summit" to be followed by a "gala event" sponsored by the CCC.

The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) is an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that receives funding from at least two U.S. government agencies (the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Information Agency) as well as from private organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy. CIPE promotes economic "reform," private enterprise, and "democratic consolidation" around the world. CIPE "aggressively spreads a pro-business, pro-freedom message and administers programs to train future leaders in emerging democracies around the world."

Meetings

^{September 11-13, 2000, International Trade Leadership Program, Washington, DC}

^{September 13, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit, Houston, TX}

^{October 3, 2000, Techiesday, Washington, DC}

^{October 4, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit, Salt Lake City, UT}

^{October 26, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit, Miami, FL}

^{November 8, 2000, NCF/Hudson Institute Election Impact: Trade, Taxes & the Economy, Washington DC}

^{November 10, 2000, Health Care Solutions Summit, Detroit, MI}

^{November 30, 2000, E-commerce USA, Miami, FL}

^{December 5, 2000, E-commerce Americas, Mexico City, Mexico}

^{December 5-6, 2000, Commercial Aviation Summit, Washington, DC}

^{December 13, 2000, E-Commerce USA, Fort Worth, TX}

^{February 2001(tentative), E-Commerce Europe, London, England}

^{April 4-5, 2001, World Economic Forum, USA Meeting, Washington, DC}

^{May 18-19, 2001, Annual Board Meeting and Retreat, Naples, FL}

U.S. Export-Import Bank

811 Vermont Ave NW

Washington DC 20571

Telephone: 800-565-3946

Fax: 202-565-3380

www.exim.gov

The ExIm Bank is the official export credit agency of the United States. It was created in 1934 in order to stimulate exports from the United States. The ExIm (1) provides guarantees of working capital loans for U.S. exporters, (2) guarantees the repayment of loans or makes loans to foreign purchasers of U.S. goods and services, and (3) provides credit insurance against non-payment by foreign buyers for political or commercial risk. A few examples of ExIm projects in the past year:

ExIm is backing a $77 million loan from Citicorp to Bulgaria so that Westinghouse can modernize the Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

In August 2000, the ExIm Bank signed a Project Incentive Agreement with the Nigerian government and the Central Bank of Nigeria to increase U.S. exports for Nigerian private sector infrastructure projects. The ExIm Bank has similar agreements with Vietnam, Russia, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine.

ExIm is financing the $36 million export of Motorola telecommunications equipment to the Dominican Republic

ExIm is providing $490 million in loan guarantees for Tyumen Oil of Russia to buy oil refinery equipment and engineering services from ABB Lummus Global, Halliburton, and other suppliers, for the Ryazan oil refinery near Moscow and the Samotlor oil field in western Siberia.

The top ten corporate recipients of ExIm Bank financing in 1998 included aerospace giant Boeing ($2.6 billion), earthmoving equipment and engine manufacturer Caterpillar ($390 million), Westinghouse ($197), the petrochemical services corporation Halliburton ($150 million), and General Motors ($138 million)-as well as the Japanese corporation Marubeni ($186 million) and the Swiss engineering corporation ABB Asea Brown Boveri ($215 million). Boeing was the top recipient in 1996, 1997, and 1998.

Amidst charges of bribery, and after personal lobbying by U.S. President Clinton, Brazil awarded a $1.4 billion contract to the U.S. military contractor Raytheon. The contract calls for Raytheon to construct SIVAM, a high-tech radar, surveillance, and weapon systems covering 22 million square kilometers of the Amazon. The ostensible purpose of SIVAM is to map soil, terrain, minerals and vegetation, expose drug smugglers, support air traffic control and climatological studies, and strengthen border security and communications. Critics fear the system will also be used to survey and sell timber, minerals, and oil and gas, and point to Mitsubishi, Lockheed, and other corporations which have purchased aerial photographs of the Amazon from E-Systems, a Raytheon contractor, to prospect for oil, timber, and minerals. More than $1 billion of the financing will come from the U.S. ExIm Bank, on the grounds that the construction of the system will employ many Americans.

ExIm was involved in a $1.3 billion loan for the sale of Sikorsky helicopters to Turkey, and Sikorsky, a subsidiary of United Technologies, is likely to make another $360 million by exporting thirty helicopters as part of the recent $1.3 billion package of U.S. military aid to Colombia. Sikorsky is represented by Congressman Sam Gejdenson, the ranking member of the U.S. House International Relations Committee, and by Christopher Dodd, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Narcotics. Former U.S. Representative Gerald Solomon (R-NY), a lobbyist for the Colombia aid package, said the support of Dodd and Gejdenson was "absolutely crucial." Dodd and Gejdenson opposed military intervention in Latin America during the 1980s, but recently changed their minds. Between 1997 and early 2000, Gejdenson received $19,000 in political contributions from United Technologies and Dodd received $33,200. The Texas Congressional delegation helped secure the sale of 33 Huey helicopters manufactured by the Bell Helicopter Textron, which hired lobbyist Tony Gillespie, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. "It's business for us, and we are as aggressive as anybody," said a Bell lobbyist. "I'm just trying to sell helicopters."

Loans for weapons exports which might be opposed by Congress if they were to come from the Pentagon are sometimes arranged through the ExIm Bank's "dual use" program under which aircraft and equipment that can be used for both military and civilian purposes, such as the recent $44 million in ExIm loans to Indonesia for spare parts for military aircraft, and a $90 million loan to Romania to finance the purchase of five Lockheed Martin radar systems. "Because transport and communications projects that fit ExIm's "dual use" definition will be an important part of NATO expansion, ExIm loans are likely to be utilized as yet another important avenue for subsidizing the growth of the alliance."

The ExIm is a government-held corporation governed by a board of directors consisting of

James A. Harmon (Schroder Wertheim international investment bank), Jackie M. Clegg (staff to U.S. Senator Jake Garn and Senate committees), Dan Renberg (staff for U.S. Senator Arlen Specter, attorney for Wiley, Rein & Fielding), Dorian Vanessa Weaver (White House staff for U.S. President Clinton, Engineering Research Associates), U.S. Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley (son of Chicago mayor, attorney with Mayer, Brown & Platt, president of Amalgamated Bank of Chicago), and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky (trade attorney with Steptoe & Johnson).

The 2001 annual conference of the ExIm Bank will beheld on April 5-6, 2001 at the Marriott Wardman Hotel in Washington, DC.

U.S. Federal Reserve Bank

20th Street and Constitution Ave, NW

Washington DC 20551

Telephone: (202) 452-3000

www.federalreserve.gov

The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, was founded by Congress in 1913 "to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system." The Federal Reserve Bank describes itself as a government agency, and its duties as (1) conducting the nation's monetary policy; (2) supervising and regulating banking institutions and protecting the credit rights of consumers; (3) maintaining the stability of the financial system; and (4) providing certain financial services to the U.S. government, the public, financial institutions, and foreign official institutions. As discussed in Part 1 of this report, central banks are actually quasi-official corporations with unique and enormous power to set interest rates, loan money to banks and to the government itself, and to transfer currency and gold to and from other countries.

There are twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco.

The Federal Reserve's board of governors consists of seven bankers appointed by the U.S. President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve 14-year terms of office. Members may serve only one term. The President also designates, with Senate confirmation, two members of the board to be chairman and vice chairman, for four-year terms.

The seven board members constitute a majority of the twelve-member Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which makes decisions affecting the cost and availability of money and credit in the economy. The other five members of the FOMC are Reserve Bank presidents, one of whom is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The members of the board "routinely confer with officials of other government agencies, representatives of banking industry groups, officials of the central banks of other countries, members of Congress and academicians. For example, they meet frequently with Treasury officials and the Council of Economic Advisers to help evaluate the economic climate and to discuss objectives for the nation's economy. Governors also discuss the international monetary system with central bankers of other countries and are in close contact with the heads of the U.S. agencies that make foreign loans and conduct foreign financial transactions."

Alan Greenspan, current chairman of the Federal Reserve, was originally appointed in 1987 by U.S. President Reagan. Under his leadership, the Fed bailed out Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund with several former Fed officials on its board, and cut interest rates three times to prop up weak Asian and Latin American currencies and the Dow Jones.

U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)

1100 New York Ave NW

Washington, DC 20527

Telephone: (202) 336-8595

www.opic.gov

The mission of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), part of the U.S. Department of State, is to "to mobilize and facilitate the participation of United States private capital and skills in the economic and social development of less developed countries and areas, and countries in transition from nonmarket to market economies, thereby complementing the development assistance objectives of the United States.."

OPIC accomplishes this mission by providing loans, guarantees, and insurance to U.S. corporations operating overseas. OPIC insures investments against three different risks:

Inconvertibility of currency, which protects investors from increased restrictions on the investor's ability to "convert local currency into U.S. dollars" (in other words, remove their profits from the host country).

Expropriation coverage provides compensation for losses due to confiscation, nationalization, or governmental actions which "deprive the investor of its fundamental rights in the investment."

Political risk insurance, which covers investors against losses caused by "politically motivated acts of violence [such as] war, revolution, insurrection or civil strife, including terrorism and sabotage."

OPIC's rationale is that "private sector investment overseas contributes substantially to both the national and foreign policy interests of U.S. citizens. It strengthens and expands the U.S. economy by improving U.S. competitiveness in the international marketplace. It also helps less developed nations expand their economies and become valuable markets for U.S. goods and services, thereby increasing U.S. exports and creating U.S. jobs."

OPIC also "advocates on behalf of U.S. business clients that have made long-term investments in emerging markets and developing nations. OPIC also works with host country governments to help create economic climates that attract U.S. investment, facilitating the entry of hundreds of U.S. businesses into new markets abroad."

OPIC also sponsors seminars and conferences and works with other federal government agencies, state and local governments, private organizations and multilateral institutions to "increase awareness" among U.S. companies of the "real opportunities for business expansion through overseas investment."

OPIC claims to have supported (corporate) investments worth nearly $130 billion in 140 countries, generated $61 billion in U.S. (corporate) exports, and helped to create 242,000 American jobs. OPIC-backed projects include agribusiness, telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing, mining, energy, and transportation. Like many other national and multinational agencies, OPIC is also using government-guaranteed subsidies to support "privatization" projects.

OPIC is typically financing and insuring 400 corporations. Its project lists are published as part of its annual report, and they are available in the OPIC website. Below is a table of recent projects.

Recipient	Location	Project
Citibank	Central America and Caribbean	Central American and Caribbean Investment Facility, a $200 million medium-to-long-term lending facility to support private sector development (Feb 1999)
Entergy Power Group	Bulgaria	Privatization and modernization of the 840-megawatt lignite-fired Maritza East III power plant.
Soros Private Fund Management (SPFM)	Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey and Montenegro, "an emerging consumer market of 112 million people."	$100 million loan guaranty for the Southeast Europe Equity Fund managed by SPFM, which will be required to raise $50 million of equity capital. OPIC already provides $65 million in financing and insurance for projects in Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, and other OPIC-supported funds have invested more than $30 million in the region.
Atlantic Methanol Production Co. (CMS Enterprises and Nobel Affiliates and the Guinean government)	Equatorial Guinea	$173 million guaranty and up to $200 million in political risk insurance for a $450 million methanol plant on the island of Bioko.
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company	Turkey	$50 million loan guaranty to build a $222 million hotel and convention facility.
Enron Corporation	Guatemala	$50 million in financing for the expansion of an electric power generation facility which will supply 20 percent of Guatemala's electricity.
InterOil Limited	Papua New Guinea	Loan guaranty up to $85 million for the construction and operation of an oil refinery and storage facility near Port Moresby.

OPIC complements the entry of U.S. government agencies and corporations into new markets such as eastern Europe (see the profile of NATO). In early 2000, OPIC and the U.S. Trade Development Agency (TDA) opened an office in Croatia to promote U.S. (corporate) investment in Southeast Europe, following recent trips by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

OPIC's $350 million New Africa Infrastructure Fund for investment in the sub-Sahara is expected to leverage an additional $2 billion of corporate investment which will generate $50 million in annual revenues for African countries -and $350 million in American exports.

OPIC's focus on promoting investment is understandable in the light of its unique role in providing insurance against political risk. As OPIC points out, all of its guaranty and insurance obligations "are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America," and the threat of U.S. government intervention is usually enough. Of the more than 6,700 contracts which OPIC and its predecessor agency (the U.S. Agency for International Development) have issued since 1966, only 263 resulted in insurance claims-resulting in $545 million in payments to investors. Three-fourths of the claims were related to expropriation; twenty percent were for incontrovertibility; five percent to civil strife, and less than 1 percent to war damage. More than two-thirds of the claims were to corporations operating in Latin America, and have included reimbursing U.S. mining corporations such as Kennecott and Anaconda.

The existence of OPIC's expropriation insurance is undoubtedly a deterrent to nationalization without compensation. [G]overnments have failed to follow through on announced plans to nationalize OPIC-insured investment because we were able to bring to the attention of the governments concerned the fact of OPIC's involvement... Unfortunately, we are unable to discuss these particular cases publicly.

-- OPIC's general counsel Marshall Mays, 1973.