Global Policy Forum

by Elizabeth Becker and Edmund L. Andrews

Over the next few months, Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, will play the central role in deciding whether people in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to inexpensive drugs to fight a host of diseases. He may well be attacked by European consumers if genetically modified food shows up on their supermarket shelves without labels and against their will.

And he will be the chief referee in the global fight between heavily subsidized American farmers and their much poorer rivals in Africa and Asia, who say the subsidies are ruining their livelihoods. That is just a portion of Mr. Zoellick's ambitious agenda to reconfigure American economic relations. It also includes a free trade zone that covers the Western Hemisphere and a network of other free trade deals with southern Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and others. But with the president and most of the administration preoccupied by Iraq and the war on terrorism, Mr. Zoellick has pursued his agenda with little fanfare from the White House and sometimes with little attention.

Mr. Zoellick, considered a top-notch strategist by friend and foe alike, says that trade should not be forgotten in the war planning.

"The long-term war against terrorism has to include trade, openness and development," he said in a recent interview. Implicit in the international rules, he said, is an even bigger goal: persuading other countries to accept American ideas about internal reforms that could eventually affect nearly every aspect of daily life.

"Trade is more than economic efficiency," Mr. Zoellick said. "It's about America's role in the world." Being ambitious is one thing, but delivering the goods is quite another. Mr. Zoellick wins praise for his ability to think big and for his tireless efforts to build friendships with foreign leaders. But he has also found himself blocked by vested interests at home and abroad.

His attempt to help poor countries circumvent patents on drugs for AIDS and other epidemics has been thwarted by the pharmaceutical industry. His goal of opening agricultural trade has been undermined by America's own array of subsidies and tariff barriers.

Many experts say the administration paid far too high a price to win passage in Congress of "trade promotion authority," which allows the president to negotiate trade agreements and gives Congress the right to vote on it without any changes.

Besides capitulating to the powerful farm lobby in Congress, going along with an 80 percent increase in subsidies and a 10-year, $180 billion farm bill, the administration also agreed to protect steel makers with higher tariffs and promised to consult with Congress on a long list of industries — orange juice, tomatoes, sugar and textiles — before making any trade deals.

"Bush would have to have a real transformation in his agenda to deliver on his promises," said Gary Hufbauer, an analyst at the Institute for International Economics, a research group that supports free trade. "The most important trade negotiator is Karl Rove," he said, referring to President Bush's top political adviser. "He really made the call on steel and on farm. He counts the votes."

A consummate Washington insider, Mr. Zoellick has deep roots in the Republican Party but is always careful to cultivate friendships with influential Democrats. He became a trusted aide of James A. Baker III, both at the Treasury and State Departments during the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he advised Gov. George W. Bush and joined his old mentor Mr. Baker in Florida during the post-election battle over vote counting. White House officials say the president has nicknamed Mr. Zoellick "Z man," but he is not part of the innermost circle. Instead, he is respected and encouraged to roam widely.

"Zoellick is undoubtedly one of the three or four smartest people I've ever encountered in my professional life," one senior White House official said.

When he is given a free hand, Mr. Zoellick has proved to be relatively adept at winning over his foreign colleagues. Diplomats who watched Mr. Zoellick lead the revival of global trade talks in Doha, Qatar, immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 gush over his talent to define an issue, come up with a solution and then a strategy to achieve it.

"If it were not for Zoellick, I don't know where we'd be," said Sergio Marchi, the Canadian ambassador to the World Trade Organization.

But when the administration weighed in on those talks in December, insisting that Mr. Zoellick block a proposal to allow poor countries to buy inexpensive generic drugs for all major epidemics, it brought the negotiations to a standstill.

The United States stood alone against the proposal. The other countries at the World Trade Organization meeting, as well as religious leaders and health advocates, had argued that out of a sense of compassion and responsibility for poor countries, the United States must agree to extend the privilege of buying low-cost drugs for diseases other than H.I.V. and AIDS; malaria; and tuberculosis.

"I am sort of amused by his approach — shaking hands, patting shoulders, making nice words," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and an adamant critic of free trade deals. "In the end, though, it's still the same demand — hand over the money."

A prolific writer and a man driven to make his mark on the world stage, Mr. Zoellick has been plagued throughout his career with assertions that he lacks the kind of bonhomie and people skills that would help him widen his influence inside the administration and build broad-based coalitions outside it. "I am a big fan and friend of Bob's, but I have to say it is amazing he's gotten as far as he has, given the number of enemies he's made," said a former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Brains are not in doubt; disposition is.

His fans say Mr. Zoellick, who is 49, is a visionary who combines diplomacy with the art of deal making. His detractors say he is also an arrogant man who is both abrasive and dismissive of those he considers inept.

Mickey Kantor, the first trade representative for President Clinton, said that sort of criticism came with the territory.

"If you're aggressive and bright with a clear trade agenda, you're always going to get tagged with that kind of label," he said. "I'd be worried if you didn't have such a strong and ambitious man in the job."

How Mr. Zoellick handles himself and his multiple constituencies will affect the nation's widening trade deficit — which in November reached a record of $40.1 billion, or 5 percent of the gross domestic product — and his ability to convince wavering countries that trade with the United States is better than conflict.

That fits with Mr. Zoellick's preoccupation with history. In his rare hours of relaxation, he says he is either running or studying history. He considers his greatest achievement to be his role in the first Bush administration as a senior negotiator who helped bring about the reunification of Germany. In a speech at the Reichstag in Berlin last summer, he said he considered himself fortunate "to be among the final cohort of America's cold war diplomats, to have been one of the last of a long line of my countrymen who kept a promise to the German people: a pledge of Freiheit und Einheit" — freedom and unity.

A Midwesterner with German ancestors, Mr. Zoellick received the Knight Commanders Cross from the unified German government.

His current preoccupation with Europe is far less benign. He is convinced that the United States has fallen behind Europe in signing free trade agreements. He has begun negotiations or signed new treaties almost weekly, saying that the United States cannot wait for the World Trade Organization to complete a new round of trade rules.

"If some countries aren't ready to move, then we'll go ahead with those who are," he said.

But trade experts say that Mr. Zoellick is unlikely to complete any of the biggest deals before the end of Mr. Bush's first term. Negotiations to lower farm barriers, a crucial component of the global talks, are already being resisted by the sugar, tomato and orange-juice industries — each of which has enormous political power in Florida and with the state's governor, Jeb Bush.

Equally explosive is the issue of textiles, one of the most protected industries in America. The United States and most other countries pledged to abandon textile quotas by 2005, the same year that countries are supposed to reach a new global trade deal, but textile supporters in Congress and the next Democratic presidential candidate will oppose that with every means they have.

For now, Mr. Zoellick says his top priorities are to keep negotiations on track for a new global trade agreement, push ahead with a free trade agreement for the Western Hemisphere and complete more free trade agreements with individual nations to catch up with the European Union.

"I came in with the trade debate being dominated by the anti-globalization crowd and a bunch of defeatists who were saying globalization is bad," he said. "The debate is no longer about whether to support global free trade. It's about how."

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