Last Tuesday, a crowd in downtown Seattle assembled in front of a McDonald's restaurant. First, a French dairy farmer, defending European agricultural export subsidies, denounced the World Trade Organization. Next, a Brazilian farmer, harmed by those same European export subsidies, excoriated the WTO. Then an American rancher, hurt by the European Union's ban on hormone-fed beef, condemned the WTO. Finally, a vegan attacked the WTO. By rights, the three farmers should have been at each others' throats, and the vegan presumably wanted to put both the Frenchman and the American out of business, but in the topsy-turvy world of Seattle, the four joined together and smashed the windows of the McDonald's.

Last week, representatives from more than 134 countries and more than 500 nongovernmental organizations met in Seattle for the biennial ministerial meeting of the WTO with the putative task of launching the next round of global-trade talks. Going into the meetings, expectations were low: There was no global upswell for trade liberalization. Asia was still recovering from its financial crisis, and policymakers there believed they already had enough issues to grapple with.

Japan showed its lack of interest in further trade liberalization by blocking the Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization effort in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. And in the United States, President Bill Clinton has been unable to secure "fast track" trade-negotiating authority from Congress.