Page 161 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Liberalization and the Ascendancy of Trade 151

status of foreign communication policy within the American state.
Ironically, in implementing what were essentially free flow reforms
through USTR-based agreements, the emerging importance of com-
munication and information commodity interests has not necessarily
produced a concurrent growth in the authority of established foreign
communication policy agencies. The complex intra-state character of
this policy field remains largely unchanged since facing its crisis period
in the 1980s. What has changed is that the USTR has taken foreign
communication concerns to a higher level- reflecting the centrality of
these concerns among a diversity of corporate interests - while the
State Department, FCC, NTIA and others constitute resource centers
utilized by trade and other officials. While inter-state battles ov.er the
meanings and applications of new trade agreements will continue
through the WTO and other forums, the USTR will almost certainly
remain the core conceptual and instrumental mediator of US foreign
communication policy. The status and responsibilities now shouldered by
USTR and related public offieials reflect the now unquestioned central-
ity of information-based commodity producers and distributors in the
US political economy. 15 The very public and potentially very dam-
aging 1995 trade dispute between the US and the People's Republic of
China (not a member of the WTO) over PRC-based software piracy
activities underlined, for instance, the elevated status of International
Intellectual Property Alliance corporations in the 1990s.
As outlined in this and the preceding chapter, domestic reforms
fueled the foreign communication policy crisis and the direct inter-
vention of private sector interests in restructuring both the American
state and international institutions. Of course these domestic reforms,
involving the ascendancy of trade agreements and the USTR, were
crafted to enable the American state to mediate the needs of what
arguably was becoming the most important economic sector in the
US. Through US threats involving market access, threats to the ITU,
and even - in the case of UNESCO - the near-eradication of relatively
weak and unaccommodating international organizations, free flow of
information principles have been institutionalized through free trade.
Rather than interpreting these recent and dramatic changes in
international communications to be the result of the ascendancy of
transnational capital over nation states, the US clearly has acted as
the essential mediator of these reforms. Moreover, the continuing
centrality of the USTR indicates that even though the WTO and
other international reform goals have been achieved, US and for-
eign-based TNCs remain dependent on nation states to act or react