In November and December of 1999, at least forty thousand protestors descended on downtown Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference. Some dressed as or brandished images of sea turtles, which symbolized the WTO’s overturning of environmental regulations against trawling. Alongside them marched representatives of the steelworkers’ unions, who protested the dumping of low-cost steel on United States markets. Also present were consumer groups opposing a WTO ruling that prevented Europe from restricting the import of hormone-treated beef. Green activists, blue-collar workers, and consumer advocates formed an eclectic alliance furious at the impact of the WTO’s enforcement of free trade on the environment and workers’ rights.

Over the course of several days, the “Battle of Seattle” shut down the city’s downtown core. Police, unprepared for the scale of the demonstrations, responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades. WTO delegates couldn’t leave their hotel rooms, and opening ceremonies for the conference were postponed. Seattle mayor Paul Schell declared a state of emergency; Washington governor Gary Locke called in the national guard; trade talks collapsed.

For those who, like me, came of age politically at the end of the twentieth century, the WTO protests cemented “free trade” as a byword for environmental destruction and worker exploitation. The anti-globalization protests of 1999 look very different a quarter of a century later, when the economic and foreign policies of Donald Trump and now Joe Biden have both sought to overturn elements of the free trade order to gain a competitive advantage over China in the purported interests of American workers.