By Elisabeth Olson
New York TimesAugust 15, 2002
Supachai Panitchpakdi, a soft-spoken Thai economist, has been a passionate chess player since he took up the game as a teenager. Starting next month, he will give those tactical skills a good workout when he becomes director general of the World Trade Organization, a fractious lot of countries all pledged to the same end — global free trade — but always divided over how to achieve it.
The divisions have been particularly apparent in recent months as the elation that followed the start of the Doha trade round in Qatar last year has waned, a victim of disputes between the European Union and Washington over farm subsidies and steel tariffs, and a potentially costly fight over tax breaks for American corporations.
Mr. Supachai will be the organization's first leader from the developing world, and is seen as a champion of poorer countries. But he will have to deal with their lingering discontent over what they see as unfair treatment in global trade.
Already, interim deadlines in the trade round's timeline to open access to the world's markets have slipped in Geneva, where the day-to-day negotiations take place, and the January 2005 completion date is looking increasingly unlikely.
He will have to herd this disparate lot toward that deadline without antagonizing either the big trading powers or the smaller developing nations, who make up the bulk of the organization's 144 members.
So far, while watching from the sidelines after being appointed three years ago in an unusual compromise, he has had to draw on some of the humility and patience he learned during a brief period two decades ago as a Buddhist monk.
Mr. Supachai, who has held various government posts in Thailand, including deputy premier and trade minister, offered to mediate the big traders' steel dispute. The response: no, thank you.
"He doesn't occupy the position of leadership," Anthony Gooch, until recently the European Commission's trade spokesman, said at a news briefing in June. "His views will be valued and considered when he does occupy that position."
Mr. Supachai, a well-regarded economist who has written books on globalization, shrugged off the rebuff. "I was just trying to say we should explore options," he said in a recent interview.
He has had plenty of time to cultivate his patience, along with his extensive collection of bonsai trees, while waiting in the wings to take over the director general's job. After a hotly disputed race for the top spot at the World Trade Organization, a compromise was struck in 1999 that split the term, giving the first stint to Mr. Supachai's rival, Mike Moore of New Zealand.
At the time, Mr. Supachai, who had been the front-runner until Mr. Moore entered the race, took the unusual step of publicly complaining, saying that his chances had been poisoned by accusations that he twisted arms and promised favors to get the job. The contest turned because some European and developing countries believed that the United States was railroading its choice of Mr. Moore.
That was the first of several frank remarks for which Mr. Supachai, 56, has been reproached as someone who "shoots from the lip." The impression was reinforced the next year when he tangled with Pascal Lamy, the European Union trade commissioner, over how broad the Doha trade round should be. Mr. Supachai preferred a more narrowly focused round. More sweeping trade rounds are harder to conclude, but they give more maneuvering room to industrial powers.
In recent months, he again ruffled superpower feathers by espousing a code of conduct for multinationals to follow in trade negotiations — an unwelcome suggestion on both sides of the Atlantic.
"He has to be careful and not be too outspoken," one European trade envoy said. "Otherwise, the greater danger is that the big powers could start to ignore him completely."
Yet, now that he is taking the reins, Mr. Supachai will be global trade's most visible cheerleader, appearing around the world to push the benefits of open markets. He will also be trade's chief conciliator, encouraging countries to take on entrenched domestic interests. And while he can cajole or nudge, he has no formal authority in this member-driven organization to shove the countries into agreement.
"What he can do is create an environment where positions can be harmonized," said Nepal's envoy, Shambu Ram Simkhada, who is leading his country's effort to join the W.T.O.
Mr. Supachai's formal, low-key manner contrasts markedly with the breezy, chummy style of his immediate predecessor. Mr. Moore prides himself on grabby one-liners to make trade relevant to average people; Mr. Supachai is seen as a sort of egghead, more preoccupied with the theory of trade than with its actual practice.
"He's an individual who's very reflective, where Mike was very instinctive" said Sergio Marchi, Canada's ambassador to the W.T.O. "But that doesn't mean he's going to be a pushover."
In fact, Mr. Marchi said, Mr. Supachai's willingness to "throw out solutions" impresses him as "better than having a director general who sticks his finger in the air, and waits to see how the breeze is blowing."
Mr. Supachai says he takes criticism in stride, although prefers it to be "well intentioned and constructive." But either way, he said, it will not deflect him from pursuing his vision of a wider marketplace where trade ties the world together.
Mr. Supachai is taking over as the organization is trying to steer a steady course after a stormy period that included in December 1999 when anti-globalization protesters disrupted the W.T.O. summit in Seattle, a debacle that grabbed headlines around the globe.
Less than three years later, the accord at Doha, hailed as a turning point for the W.T.O., has been undermined by resurgent protectionist sentiments.
Mr. Supachai says he can get the talks on track. He has overcome challenges before, he said, pointing to the 10 years he spent in the Netherlands getting his Ph.D. in economics. Before he could even start classes at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, he had to spend more than a year learning Dutch.
"I was a guinea pig at the time," said Mr. Supachai, the first Thai to study there.
When he returned to Bangkok, he worked for Thailand's central bank. There, he met his wife, Sasai, who quit her job to help run his political campaigns. "She's a very good, and tough, campaigner, better than me," he laughed. Mr. Supachai vaulted from representing a district on Bangkok's outskirts to being the finance minister — and boss of the central bank — by the time he was 40.
He headed Thailand's delegation at the end of the Uruguay round of trade talks, which took seven years to conclude.
Wrapping up the current round in three years, Mr. Supachai said, means that "we can't stop working at any time." He has made no secret that he believes that success depends on some concessions to developing countries, especially in crucial areas like apparel.
But despite his zeal for free trade, Mr. Supachai admits it is only "one means to improve people's lives."
"There is a limit," he said. "We can't cure all social ills."
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