Peter Sutherland Led Negotiations to Create the WTO
January 10 2018 - 6:37PM
Dow Jones News
By James R. Hagerty
When Peter Sutherland became the world's top trade official in
July 1993, negotiators had been bickering for nearly seven years in
what seemed like a futile quest to reduce tariffs and other
barriers to international commerce. Mr. Sutherland, a gregarious
Irish lawyer who had broken his nose nine times playing rugby,
declared it was no longer enough for national leaders to "mouth
good intentions."
Within six months, as director general of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade, he had badgered and shamed 117 nations into
accepting the market-opening accord that created the World Trade
Organization, an engine for globalization that later helped lift
China out of poverty and transformed industries world-wide.
By the time Mr. Sutherland died on Jan. 7 at age 71, the
backlash against globalization was in full swing. Even so, he
remained committed to global rule-making. The alternative, he
argued, was a return to nationalism and conflict that could
impoverish billions. He described Britain's plan to withdraw from
the European Unity as "insanity."
Mr. Sutherland found his calling as a globalist in 1985 when the
Irish government sent him to Brussels as a commissioner of what was
then the European Community. He pushed for freer competition
between airlines and telecom companies, cracked down on government
subsidies propping up dying industries and helped lead the way to
the European Union and its single market.
His experience as a Eurocrat and global trade czar made him
irresistible to corporate recruiters. A chance 1980s meeting with a
Goldman Sachs Group executive in an airport lounge eventually led
to a partnership in that investment bank that made him rich. He
also served as chairman of BP PLC. In his later years, he advised
the United Nations on migration and the Vatican on its
finances.
One regret was that he never was appointed president of the
European Commission, the administrative body of the EU. "I would
have given my right arm and leg" for that job, he said in a 2010
interview.
Peter Denis Sutherland was born April 25, 1946, in Dublin, where
his father was an insurance broker. At a Jesuit-run boys school, he
relished rugby and debate. After graduating from University College
Dublin, he qualified as a lawyer. He married Maruja Cabria
Valcarcel, a Spanish woman he met while she was working as an au
pair in Ireland.
In his mid-20s, he ran for a seat in the Irish parliament but
was trounced. Instead, he became a close adviser to Garret
FitzGerald, a leader of the Fine Gael party. When he became prime
minister, Mr. FitzGerald named Mr. Sutherland attorney general, a
position that thrust him into tricky battles over abortion and the
Irish Republican Army.
After he was sent to Brussels, he was given the European
Community's competition portfolio and used it to crack down on
cartels and subsidies. He fined 15 chemical companies for fixing
prices of polypropylene.
After leaving Brussels in 1989, he became chairman of Allied
Irish Banks. When the global trade talks were bogged down in 1993,
he was the choice of both U.S. and European politicians to head the
global trade bureaucracy in Geneva.
Using a combination of charm and threats, he herded trade
negotiators into line. His pitch was that freer trade would create
millions of jobs. Among the last-minute issues he resolved were
efforts by aircraft makers and European farmers to save their
subsidies. In December 1993, he banged down a gavel to signal
agreement on a 22,000-page trade agreement. Delegates to the Geneva
trade talks gave him a standing ovation.
Mr. Sutherland's involvement with Goldman Sachs began in the
1980s when Eugene Fife, an executive of the investment bank,
spotted the Irishman as the two prepared to board a Concorde flight
across the Atlantic. Mr. Fife was impressed by Mr. Sutherland's
insights into politics and economics and vast array of contacts.
"It was very hard to find anybody who didn't like him," Mr. Fife
said.
The Irishman first served on an international advisory panel for
Goldman and later was chairman of the arm of the bank responsible
for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Colleagues discreetly
advised the rumpled Mr. Sutherland that, as a Goldman partner, he
could afford to upgrade his suits.
At BP, Mr. Sutherland became chairman in 1997. He appeared to
work well with the oil company's CEO, John Browne. But Mr.
Sutherland in 2006 insisted on setting a specific date for Mr.
Browne's retirement amid speculation that the CEO might want to
linger indefinitely. (Mr. Browne ended up resigning abruptly from
BP in 2007 amid a scandal over his relationship with a former
lover.) Mr. Sutherland retired from BP at the end of 2009.
In May 2016, he told an Irish newspaper he was busy advising the
UN on refugee crises. "I'm up to my gills in travel and dealing
with the migration issue," he said. Later that year, he suffered a
heart attack from which he never totally recovered.
He is survived by his wife, three children and 10
grandchildren.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 10, 2018 18:22 ET (23:22 GMT)
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