The World Trade Organization’s Doha round to free up trade is nearly complete and world leaders are voicing the political will to reach a deal next year, Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said on Wednesday.
But at a meeting of key trade ministers in India on Thursday and Friday to advance the talks, trading powers will want to see whether the United States is ready to move on a deal — or tell its partners what it would take for Washington to sign up.
Crean’s comments, ahead of the Delhi meeting of some 35 ministers were important because negotiators will not put all their cards on the table and reach a deal until they are convinced the negotiations have reached the final stage.
As a result there has been a disconnect between calls by country heads and trade ministers to finish the trade talks and the apparent inertia of the detailed negotiations in Geneva.
“So far as the round is concerned, we are very close to its conclusion,” Crean told a meeting hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on the sidelines of the Delhi talks. “We are now in the end-game of the Doha negotiations.”
Crean, one of the strongest proponents of a deal, said a Doha trade pact would help pull the world out of the recession and act as a bulwark against protectionism. He said he was sure that both India and the United States, whose differences in the past have blocked agreement, were now committed to reaching a Doha deal.
India’s new trade minister, Anand Sharma has won praise from other countries for organizing the Delhi meeting.
Some skeptics suggest India is keen to show willingness after being repeatedly blamed in western media for setbacks to the Doha round, now in its eighth year.
Under President Barack Obama the United States too has voiced more willingness to reach a deal in the talks, launched in late 2001 to help poor countries prosper through trade.
But many negotiators blame the current impasse on the fact that Obama has more pressing priorities, such as healthcare or the financial crisis, and so the White House has not been able to decide its Doha negotiating strategy.
As trade liberalization is in any case unpopular with many Americans, the administration may not be able to move much until after next year’s midterm elections, making a mockery of the latest deadline to complete the Doha round agreed by world leaders at July’s G8+ summit in L’Aquila — 2010.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is due to give a news conference on Friday after the closed-door meeting ends.
Crean said the United States knows what it must give up — hefty subsidies for American farmers that depress world prices — but is not clear what it would gain in exchange, and that required other countries to show some flexibility.
“This isn’t a conclusion that’s going to happen if one side thinks it’s only the other side that has to give. Both sides, if they’re to take, have to give,” he said.
SAFEGUARDS AND SECTORALS
But an Indian industrialist showed how hard it a deal would be when he reiterated India’s position on two of the issues that torpedoed a round of ministerial negotiations in July last year.
Dhruv Sawhney, past president of the CII and chairman of Triveni Engineering & Industries
“The introduction of these right now is something that’s taking away from the developmental nature of the round,” he said of the sectoral deals, warning they would hurt India’s small and medium-sized businesses.
Crean said the principle of a safeguard for poor farmers was generally accepted but it must not be used to choke off normal growth in trade. He said India too could benefit from sector deals in some areas, such as one proposed for jewelry trade.
Indian farmers are to protest on Thursday in Delhi at what they see as government readiness to compromise on the safeguard.
And the global anti-WTO network, Our World Is Not For Sale, sent a letter to ministers, urging them to reject a Doha deal that would exacerbate rather than resolve hunger and poverty.
The Delhi talks will not engage in any substantive negotiations but are likely to reaffirm the 2010 deadline and exhort senior officials to redouble their efforts in the core areas of agriculture and industrial goods, and make advances in other sectors like services and trade in environmental goods, said participants in a meeting of officials on Wednesday.
Ministers want to be able to tell this month’s G20 summit in Pittsburgh that the talks are now making progress, Crean said.
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Topics USA Agribusiness Australia
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