Pressure on Geneva WTO talks
The Financial Times has an article on the WTO talks which Phil Goff is attending in Geneva.
There is video interview with Peter Mandelson accompanying the article.
The following extract gives some indication of the atmosphere:-
Rachid Mohamed Rachid, the Egyptian trade minister, said there was probably a 60 per cent chance of the talks achieving their aim of a framework deal to cut tariffs on agriculture and industrial goods.
“Expectations are very low . . . and that usually helps people to be in a more positive mindset, because they are not going to disappoint anybody,” he told the Financial Times.
But the start of the talks was also overshadowed by uncertainty over the stance of India, given the absence of Kamal Nath, the country’s trade minister, from the first two days of the negotiations. Mr Nath is in Delhi to attend Tuesday’s parliamentary vote of confidence in India’s coalition government.
Mr Nath, who has more than once been instrumental in causing ministerial meetings in the Doha round to collapse, is for the moment being represented by G.K. Pillai, his deputy at the commerce ministry, nicknamed “Dr No” by one business lobbyist for his intransigent negotiating style.
It is to be hoped that India and Brazill will be less intransigent this week, but also that the EU and the USA will show more flexibility.
However, if the paragraph on the long running EU and Latin America dispute on bananas is anything to go by do not hold your breath. Yet we are in the same position to some extent with Australia over apples.
The FT has another article here, on the global pressure to reach an accord of which the following is an extract.
Still, there are good reasons for believing that this really is, in the words of Pascal Lamy, WTO director-general, the “moment of truth” for the seven-year-old round, launched in Doha in 2001 following the September 11 attacks on the US.
The looming US presidential election in November rules out serious negotiations after the WTO’s traditional August break. Concluding a global trade pact is unlikely to be high on the priority list of a new US administration, Democrat or Republican, faced with rising protectionist sentiment.
Nor is next year’s political calendar favourable to trade talks, with changes in the executive of the European Commission and a general election in India, a key participant in the round.
Mr Lamy argues that “freezing” what is currently on the Doha table to pick up again in a year or two is simply not an option. He is not alone in believing that if a deal is not done now the round will be abandoned as future trade talks respond to a changed global agenda.
A lot is on the table already, including agreement in principle to big cuts in rich-country farm subsidies that hurt producers in poor nations, and lower tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods.
Also in the works are prospective deals on liberalising trade in services, easing customs procedures, disciplining fishing subsidies and revising anti-dumping and intellectual property rules.
WTO economists estimate the Doha round could be worth two or three times as much to the global economy as the 1986-94 Uruguay round, which may have added hundreds of billions to world income.
For NZ and for many other nations this is too important to allow the round to fail. Though it may well not be without some cost for New Zealand in respect of single desk selling for kiwifruit for example.
