Ministers from 147 countries arrived in a tense and heavily-protected Geneva Monday for a week of make-or-break talks aimed at reviving the troubled Doha round of trade negotiations, reports the World Bank press review Monday.
Real success in Geneva will pivot on agriculture, the key to this round of talks. Thanks to some major changes over the last 10 months, there is a much better chance a deal will be reached.
The biggest impetus is the landmark WTO case won by Brazil, with the backing of China, India and other big developing nations, which found that cotton subsidies in the United States unfairly distorted global trade and put farmers in poor countries at a disadvantage.
While the decision is on appeal, the victory is forcing rich nations to consider how to overhaul their farm subsidies before they are declared illegal.
One major breakthrough in recent days came when a group of African countries dropped their demands for separate negotiations on eliminating rich countries subsidies on cotton they claim are destroying the livelihoods of African farmers. They said they would agree to talk about cotton within the overall agricultural talks but only if specific deadlines are set for removing subsidies.
Meanwhile, the US has accused Jacques Chirac, French president, of hindering last-ditch efforts to rescue the Doha world trade round by fuelling doubts about the European Unions willingness to liberalize agricultural trade.
Chirac said last week that a draft agreement being considered by WTO negotiators was profoundly unbalanced and contrary to EU interests. France could not accept the proposal as a basis for negotiations and called for it to be amended.
US representative Zoellick said the presidents remarks had created uncertainty. He said other countries might be less willing to offer concessions needed to reach agreement because Chirac had thrown the EUs willingness to lower its farm trade barriers into doubt.
US President George W. Bushs administration, gunning for reelection November 2, has all but ruled out one-way concessions to get a global free-trade deal.
A draft of the interim [WTO] deal, which must be sealed by a meeting of the WTOs General Council starting July 27, notably advocates discussions to eliminate agricultural export subsidies. Washington appears to be delivering a message that it will move but only in tandem with its partners, some of whom appear reluctant.
The Financial Express of India writes India has decided to stick to the G20 alliance of developing countries to put forward its interests in agriculture at the General Council meeting of the WTO this week instead of making individual moves.
Speaking to the FE, commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath said that the G-20 had a lot of credibility and India was confident that its interests would be fully taken care of by the alliance.
Japanese media also note the Group of 10 major net food importers, including Japan, South Korea and Switzerland, will demand the deletion of a phrase asking WTO members to impose a tariff cap on high-tariff farm products from the text of a WTO-proposed global trade decontrol deal, Japanese officials said Friday.
The demand, crucial to the G-10 net food-importing countries, was integrated into a package of demands to amend the text of an accord the WTO members are seeking to reach under the Doha round of global trade talks, the officials said.
Meanwhile, in an editorial on textile quotas, The Financial Times writes that instead of offering poor nations a leg up, textiles quotas and trade preferences have often locked them into a precariously narrow range of economic activities and bred cultures of dependency and defeatism. More of the same measures will only worsen those problems.
It would be equally wrong to pretend that simply freeing trade is the solution, or to deny that doing so will pose tough adjustment challenges for weak economies. But that does not amount to an argument against scrapping barriers that penalize more people around the world than they protect.
Opening markets only creates opportunities. It cannot guarantee positive outcomes. That is the task of economic development policies, at both national and international level. Their success rate has been sadly uneven. But the failures should not be an alibi for perpetuating flawed and discriminatory trade regimes.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
