LONDON, Nov 7: Key ministers launched a last-ditch bid on Monday to save global trade talks, with rich and poor states demanding concessions to reach a deal aimed at lifting millions out of poverty.
With the clock racing towards a mid-December deadline, ministers from the United States, the European Union, Japan, Brazil and India met at the Indian embassy in London to try to bridge differences before the venue switches to Geneva on Tuesday and more ministers join.
After four years of negotiations, the gap between developed and developing nations, particularly over agriculture, remains wide. All sides have warned that the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations face collapse unless it can be narrowed fast.
Begun in 2001, the WTO’s Doha Round aims to lower barriers to business across the world economy. Ministers from its 148 member states must approve a detailed blueprint in Hong Kong next month.
“Progress is certainly needed if we are going to make Hong Kong the success we want,” said EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson as he entered the meeting. “But if that is going to be possible, we must make urgent and balanced progress across the whole agenda.”
But Brazil and India, leaders of the influential G20 developing country alliance, say that they still need more progress on agriculture, where poorer states say they have most to gain, before they can open other markets.
“Agriculture is the most structurally flawed part of world trade,” Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath told journalists.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, who will be at all the talks, warned that failure would cost the world economy hundreds of billions of dollars in lost trade opportunities, and that poorer countries would lose the most.
Mandelson earlier told EU foreign ministers in Brussels that the EU’s offer of average farm tariff cuts of nearly 40 per cent should be enough to switch the spotlight to other areas of the negotiations such as industrial goods and services.
He seemed likely to get some support from US Trade Representative Rob Portman, who held bilateral talks with his EU counterpart, on the need to bring other issues into debate.
“The United States will be standing with the EU tonight in also encouraging movement on the other areas ... But it is going to be tough until we can unblock the market access side,” he said in reference to farm tariffs.
Brazil, echoed by other farm goods exporters such as Australia, say what the EU has put on the table would exclude most of the products they are really interested in — such as beef, poultry and sugar — from deep tariff cuts.—Reuters