WTO talks stall
Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, says the Doha Development Round of negotiations are in crisis after yet another ministerial meeting in Geneva at the end of June failed to reach a consensus. Things are so bad that the ministers did not even engage in real negotiations this time; they just re-stated long held positions. The Indian minister went home early, and the Brazilian minister decided that his time would be better spent watching the World Cup.
The essence of the problem is that the Doha “development” round has become the “American ambition” round. The United States, Canada, Japan, the EU and a few others have been calling for an “ambitious” round of trade negotiations with the intent of prying open new markets for their products and services. However, that ambition did not include addressing key issues of concern for developing countries.
Canadian International Trade Minister David Emerson spent a lot of time consulting with the American delegation and determined that “ambitious” means all-or-nothing. Either the U.S. gets “huge” market access to Europe and the developing world for its agriculture, services and industrial products, or there will be no deal. Compromise, in short, is not an option. In the past, developing countries could have been bullied into accepting these terms. Not anymore, which is why negotiations have stalled.
The Council of Canadians has always seen this as the major problem with these negotiations. In a recent letter to all 149 WTO trade ministers, over 100 civil society organizations, including the Council of Canadians, made the following statement: “The current negotiations of the ‘Doha development round’ now preclude any possibility of benefiting the majority of the world’s people, particularly those living in impoverished developing countries.”
Faced with a breakdown in negotiations, Pascal Lamy will now engage in a bit of “shuttle diplomacy.” He is going to travel the world in the next couple of weeks to see if a compromise can be found with some of the key players in the lead-up to the General Council meeting of the WTO at the end of July. This was to be a key moment for the organization, but with positions so far apart, it is hard to imagine that the ministers will be able to achieve better results in a few short weeks.
Time, it appears, is running out for the Doha development round, and the scenarios are few. We could see a collapse of the talks, an unlikely “Doha light” compromise, or an even more unlikely “ambitious” outcome. A collapse represents the best scenario for developing countries, despite what you will no doubt hear from trade ministers and WTO officials. These negotiations are so far removed from their original intent that it is doubtful they could ever be put back on track toward real development.
— Jean-Yves LeFort, Trade Campaigner, The Council of Canadians, July 5, 2006
