Business Daily (Nairobi)
Martin Khor
16 March 2008
analysis
Contrary to the popular perception that the WTO's Doha talks are dead, there has been a flurry of activity in a last spurt to conclude a deal.
The trade deal must be done by December because American President George W. Bush leaves office after that, and the next president may not be interested to take over and finish the negotiations. Hillary Clinton, for example, has called for a "time out" on all trade deals.
Moreover, key individual players of this round, may not be around for long. The EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and the WTO director-general Pascal Lamy will finish their term in 2009. The Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and the Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath may not be around in their same posts after 2009.
Some of these key players want to finish the "modalities" (the main framework and figures) for liberalising trade in agricultural and industrial products by April, so that a complete deal can be done by December.
At the very latest, a modalities deal must be struck by May or June. Otherwise, the whole talks may be "frozen" until a new US president is installed and a new "fast track authority" is obtained by him or her to negotiate trade treaties and this may take years.
On February 8, the chairpersons leading the talks on these topics produced two new texts, on agriculture and industrial products. Since then, there have been more talks to try to narrow the differences among countries on the points in these texts.
But the differences have persisted, and in some ways the gaps widened. For example, the European Commission has come under strong pressure by 20 of its member states led by France not to make better "offers" to cut their farm tariffs. Subsequently, the EC hardened its position in several areas, for example rejecting the 54 per cent average tariff cut in agriculture for developed countries that the Chair of the agriculture talks had proposed.
There are also many unresolved points on the request of the Group of 33 developing countries to allow them to cut their tariffs on food products by only a little or not at all due to the need to protect their farmers' livelihoods from cheap imports.
The developing counties also want to use a simple "safeguard" to raise their farm tariffs above the bound rates when there is a surge in imports or a rise in prices above certain levels.
Many believe that the US administration cannot make a better offer because there is a strong farm lobby that wants it to maintain high farm subsidies, and moreover this is an election year.
Khor is director of Third World Network.
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