In the 1990s, the U.S. spearheaded the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a successor to GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), with the goal of expanding international commerce. The WTO holds biennial ministerial conferences where government representatives gather to negotiate trade terms and manage disputes. Anti-globalization activists mobilized at these conferences, criticizing exploitative practices in sweatshops and environmentally destructive business practices. The 1999 WTO conference in Seattle attracted particularly fierce protests, including from labor unions who denounced (in the words of the local AFL-CIO leader featured in this clip), the “current system of globalization.” In this excerpt from “World Trade: The Seattle Summit,” from KCTS in Seattle, union members lay out their condemnation of the WTO and global trade.