Trade ministers said that the proposal on sanctions derailed any hope of a compromise agreement on labor standards. Administration officials spent much of Thursday trying to calm the storm produced by Clinton's comments, while the U.S. labor movement continued to pressed the president to hold fast to the trade sanctions issue.
See "U.S. Effort to Add Labor Standards to Agenda Fails", Steven Greenhouse and Joseph Kahn, The New York Times, December 2, 1999