What happened at the WTO

What happened at the WTO on Tuesday?

Tuesday, July 27, was the first day of the WTO's General Council negotiations on the Doha trade liberalization agenda or framework (all this, Cancun and Geneva, and many negotiations between...just to flesh out the groundwork for the detailed negotiations to come).  Elizabeth Becker of the New York Times reports: "Farm Subsidies Again Take Front Seat at the W.T.O.".

"GENEVA, July 27 - Global trade talks began here Tuesday with officials hoping to break logjams and to satisfy the increasingly vocal complaints of developing nations that rich countries have yet to pledge a substantial enough cut in their $300 billion annual agricultural subsidies and supports.

But neither the haves nor the have-nots were acting as single blocs, with members of both factions seeking out splinter groups focused on particular issues. At the headquarters of the World Trade Organization, the countries gathered in a general session and later broke into discrete special-interest groups that tried to devise strategies that offer enough concessions to reach a compromise, while also appeasing groups at home..."

Becker describes a fractious meeting, but the short article is ultimately optimistic:

"After raising serious objections to farm subsidies of developed countries at a news conference, India's minister of commerce, Kamal Nath, nonetheless said: "I'm looking at the next three days with optimism. It is possible to make improvements."...

Mr. Nshuti [Rwanda's Commerce Minister - Ben] said failure of the talks was not an option. "For Africa, we are losers already,'' he said. "If there is a failure here, it is a failure for the whole world, not just Africa.''

Analysts said that some of the tough new demands from many countries were predictable devices to win greater concessions..."

This report from Michael Madigan in Australia is even more optimistic than Becker's: "Farm trade victory looms".

"...Trade Minister Mark Vaile and National Farmers Federation president Peter Corish both cancelled engagements in Townsville on Monday to fly to World Trade Organisation talks in Geneva after a dramatic shift towards consensus.

Yesterday [This is dated the 28th, so yesterday is Tuesday - Ben] both the Cattle Council of Australia and the NFF confirmed what had been unthinkable only a few months ago � that the removal of subsidies in the US and Europe was a genuine possibility.

"What they are looking at is the possible abolition of all subsidies for agriculture," Cattle Council president Keith Adams said.

"It's really been the last 24 hours that have seen the ground shift."

This seems unlikely. Would the Bush Administration, facing a tough election fight, agree to a framework that opens the possibility of an elimination of all subsidies, or that the EU would go beyond the concessions they've already made on export subsidies, given the position taken by the French.  Maybe this is referring to information about an agreement on export subsidies only.

Here is Peter Gallagher's latest report.

Paul Blustein at the Washington Post weighs in here with a general overview of the background to, and purpose of, the Geneva meetings: "Failure in Cancun Haunts WTO". Blustein surveys some of the outstanding issues. What's at stake:

"...no one here discounts the possibility that this week's meeting will end in discord. If it does, the WTO's existing rules will stay in effect, "and the talks will just drift," said Jeffrey J. Schott, a trade expert at the Institute for International Economics in Washington. "But what won't just drift is the perception of whether it's better to do business in the WTO or in bilateral or regional negotiations," such as the recently approved free-trade agreements that the United States reached with Australia and Morocco. "I think you would then call into question the viability of the WTO as a negotiating forum. That's a real risk."

That, in turn, could adversely affect the WTO's "crown jewel" -- its system for arbitrating trade disputes among nations, according to Peter D. Sutherland, a former director-general of the organization. In a Financial Times column this month, Sutherland asked whether the global trade system can continue to function well "if the institution within which it is embedded -- and on whose rules its judgments are based -- ceases to command the respect of governments and businesses."

Revised 8:45 PM Alaska local time, 7-27-04.