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The following story is from the June 25 issue of International
Trade Reporter
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Agriculture
New WTO Ag Negotiations Chair Walker
Outlines Work Plans for Immediate Term
GENEVA—The new chairman of the Doha Round negotiations on agriculture said June 18 he plans to engage in a round of consultations with World Trade Organization members before the summer break on how to narrow their differences in the stalled farm trade talks.
Speaking after a meeting of the Doha agriculture negotiating group, David Walker, the New Zealand ambassador to the WTO chairing the talks, said the organization's members expressed a desire to start work immediately on narrowing their differences on technical issues.
WTO members agreed that “we should be looking now to move ahead expeditiously with some work on outstanding gaps in pending technical issues and we should try to move ahead as quickly as possible to move ahead with technical work in that regard,”
Walker said.
As a result, Walker said he would organize consultations with various delegations on the outstanding issues through July and then report back to members before the WTO's annual summer break in August. These issues include the proposed special safeguard mechanism
(SSM) for developing countries, market access across tariff structures, tariff simplification, and others, he said.
The chairman's announcement follows a ministerial meeting of the 19-strong Cairns Group of agricultural exporting countries in Bali, Indonesia, which ended June 9 with a call for senior farm negotiators to reconvene in Geneva ahead of the summer break (26 ITR 772, 6/11/09).
Trade ministers are also due to meet June 25 on the sidelines of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's annual ministerial meeting to discuss the Doha talks, where they are expected to urge that the talks be stepped up.
G-20 Alliance Calls for Resumption
In a statement delivered at the meeting by Brazil, the Group of 20 developing country alliance on agriculture said it was “fundamental” to resume the farm trade talks before the summer break.
Walker was appointed to chair the agriculture talks last April after his predecessor, Crawford Falconer—also a New Zealand ambassador—was recalled to Wellington to serve as deputy secretary at New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The agriculture talks have effectively been on ice since December, when talks between the United States, India, and China failed to secure agreements on key sticking points, most notably the proposed SSM for developing countries allowing them to protect domestic farmers by imposing tariff surcharges when faced with farm import surges (25 ITR 1739, 12/11/08). WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy subsequently cancelled plans to convene a meeting of trade ministers later that month to hammer out breakthrough deals in the Doha agriculture and industrial tariffs talks.
The surprise recall of Falconer—who ended his term as ambassador at the end of 2008 but was asked to stay on for an indefinite period as a “special ambassador” in order to continue as agriculture chairman—led to further delays in the multilateral talks in Geneva.
Eight Years and Counting
With the Doha talks entering their eighth year, the United States has called on WTO members to consider alternative approaches for concluding the negotiations, an issue which came up indirectly at the June 18 meeting.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk reiterated on the sidelines of the Cairn Group meeting that while negotiators should not discard the progress made to date in the Doha Round, they must also consider new ideas to get the talks moving.
U.S. trade officials have floated the idea of shifting the focus from “modalities”—the draft documents setting out the general formulas and figures for cutting tariffs and farm subsidies—and entering into bilateral talks with key members on specific tariff concessions.
This approach would address Washington's complaint that the current draft modalities texts do not provide clear indications what the United States can expect in terms of new market access opportunities—particularly in emerging markets such as Brazil, China, and India—in exchange for U.S. concessions, mainly because of an array of exceptions primarily benefiting developing countries.
Preparing ‘Templates.'
Under the alternative approach advocated by Washington, WTO members would prepare draft tariff schedules to serve as the basis for the bilateral talks over the remainder of 2009, with bilateral negotiations commencing in 2010 (26 ITR 632, 5/14/09).
Walker said he would hold a technical discussion in July on “templates” for preparing tariff schedules, but a number of WTO members in attendance—in particular developing countries—expressed concern that this could be a first step toward moving to the alternative approach advocated by the United States.
“I'm not talking about scheduling,”
Walker said. “This is very much a technical discussion focusing on templates, not on potential content.”
In a riposte to the U.S. criticisms of the modalities drafts, the G-20 countries said the latest draft modalities text on agriculture dating from December was the “basis for resuming negotiations and represents the end-game in terms of the landing zones”
for a deal (25 ITR 1739, 12/11/08).
No Selective Reopening
The group also said it would not accept a “selective reopening” of the modalities texts and said it rejected the notion that any WTO member is worse off in the negotiations.
“Over the last seven years, every member negotiated, made concessions and trade-offs,” the G-20 declared.
“Every member feels that it has given more than it could and gotten less than it should.”
One WTO ambassador said he expected Kirk to continue pushing for an alternative approach for concluding the Doha negotiations when trade ministers meet June 25 in Paris at an informal gathering hosted by Australia. Some two dozen trade ministers are expected to attend, including India's new commerce minister, Anand Sharma.
By Daniel Pruzin
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