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156 Communication, Commerce and Power

preeminance of US efforts to secure free trade through the GA TI and
other means rather than an international foreign direct investment
regime. One reason is that

trade is a less sensitive matter than FDI [foreign direct investment]
and, therefore, lends itself to faster action and results. FDI involves the
[direct and visible) control of economic activities by foreigners and
some key issues surrounding FDI ... belong to the most intractable
international public-policy issues, particularly between developed and
developing countries.-lnternational Transactions in Services, p. 311.
38 The inclusion of services was largely the result of three factors. First,
most West European countries came to recognize that they held a
potentially competitive position in services and telecommunications,
but still preferred their gradual liberalization due to the recognition
that some catching-up through a protected and cooperative EC indus-
trial strategy was required. Second, the prospective development of a
Canada-US FTA, and a North American FTA, led Europeans and
other GATT members to consider a US GA TI retreat and the emer-
gence of a relatively closed regional policy to be a feasible US option.
And third, foreign public and private sector officials took seriously the
growing rhetoric emerging from the US Congress involving the applica-
tion of new US protectionist strategies. See Ibid, pp. 464-65. A New
York Times article published at the end of 1990 discussed the potential
collapse of the GATT negotiations:
'Let's face it,' said an American negotiator who spoke on the condition
that he not be identified, 'there are other avenues that we can take -
bilateral arrangements .... It's chiefly developing countries that will be
hurt by a collapse here.' ... Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher
put it more succinctly in a conversation with several American repor-
ters ... : 'We could be okay either way. The US always could make
regional or other agreements. In all truth, we're doing this now.' From
Clyde H. Farnsworth, 'If One Conference Fails, the US Has Alter-
natives,' New York Times (4 December 1990) p. C5.

39 One reason for this was that analysts interested in LDC development
tended to focus on present-day implications of direct TNC investment
and related activities. Among established Northern analysts, little would
be gained (either professionally or financially) from efforts radically to
reconceptualize the terms on which the trade in services debate had
recently developed. Drake and Nicolaidis, 'Ideas, Interests, and Institu-
tionalization,' p. 64.
40 For a critique on the neoclassical economic assumptions informing
most free trade in services proponents, see Robert E. Babe, 'Information
Industries and Economic Analysis,' in Michael Gurevitch and
Mark R. Levy (eds), Mass Communication Review Yearbook, vol. 5
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985) pp. 535--46. On conceptual and analytical
problems concerning information commodities and the communicative