WTO Members Narrow Gaps on Standards in Doha Round Advance

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Trading powers have made significant progress this week narrowing their differences on non-tariff barriers — the health or safety standards that can be abused to block imports, a senior diplomat said on Thursday.

The movement is a rare sign of progress in the World Trade Organization’s long-running Doha round and concerns an area many economists consider more important than cutting tariffs now that progressive trade opening over the years has cut import duties.

“All the delegations were very engaged; all the delegations had done their homework,” Luzius Wasescha, the Swiss ambassador to the WTO, who chairs its negotiations on industrial goods, told a briefing.

The talks cover standards in a range of major industries such as electronics, automobiles and textiles. Wasescha went out of his way — repeating comments he had made during meetings of negotiators — to say that the United States in particular was actively involved in the talks.

Many WTO members have blamed the slow progress in the 8-year-old Doha talks, in which political leaders want to see a deal in 2010, on a lack of interest from Washington.

TEXT-BASED TALKS
Wasescha hopes to pull various proposals now circulating on the barriers into a draft negotiating text next February — a key precondition to reaching a deal. “In these areas, already now we have a common basis for text-based negotiations,” Wasescha said.

One of the biggest moves in a week of talks on non-tariff barriers as part of industrial goods negotiations was on a proposal by the European Union and India, now joined by other states, to set up a “horizontal mechanism” to prevent and resolve disputes arising over the barriers.

The mechanism’s name reflects the fact that it applies to a range of areas under the WTO’s competence, from health standards more usually found in agriculture, to technical standards, customs valuations and the like.

The United States in particular was skeptical about the mechanism, arguing it would create additional bureaucracy while its relationship with the WTO’s existing dispute settlement mechanism was unclear.

Instead Washington favored passing any emerging disputes to the relevant WTO committees for that sector or area.

But with the sponsors emphasizing the voluntary nature of the mechanism, the United States has acknowledged the strong support shown by other WTO members and agreed to explore ways it could be made to function.

Besides the horizontal mechanism, negotiators have worked this week on non-tariff barriers in the electronics industry, such as safety standards, and in the automobile sector.

For the rest of the week they will look at labeling of textiles and remanufactures — retooling old goods to make them usable again, an area of strong interest to the United States but where some developing countries are concerned that their own manufacturing sectors could face competition.

Still to be dealt with in the coming months before a deal can be reached will be barriers in chemicals, and the question of non-commercial barriers to trade — a proposal pushed by Cuba to attack the long-standing U.S. embargo on the Caribbean island.