GENEVA, Switzerland – Over the two next months, the Canadian cabinet is going to have to make some delicate decisions about whether it is prepared to change any of its agricultural trade positions to help salvage the World Trade Organization negotiations.
“We need to make sure we come back in September with as much flexibility as we can possibly have because we are coming to the time in the negotiation when either everybody starts showing flexibility or we likely don’t achieve consensus,” said Don Stephenson, Canadian ambassador to the WTO.
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The particular pressure on Canada is on its defence of supply management over-quota tariffs and the Canadian Wheat Board.
Stephenson was speaking after WTO officials conceded that negotiations on many issues, but notably agriculture, had hit a wall. Negotiators, politicians and advocates of trade liberalization were scrambling for answers, excuses and particularly words to describe what had happened without conceding that the round, and a looming ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December, are in jeopardy.
In agriculture, the Hong Kong meeting is meant to produce a clear outline of the “modalities” or commitments for trade liberalization, tariff cuts and trade-distorting domestic spending cuts.
Agriculture negotiating committee chair Tim Groser insisted it was not a crisis.
“The agriculture negotiations are stalled,” he said in a July 28 report to a WTO general council meeting. “There is no way to conceal that reality.”
Liam McCreery, president of the pro-free trade Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance who spent last week leading a CAFTA lobby in Geneva, said the failure to make progress was a setback.
“We’re disappointed they haven’t been able to come up with more,” McCreery said. “We were hoping for better. That just puts more pressure in the fall but I believe they can do it.”
Carolynne Griffith, chair of Ontario Egg Producers representing Canadian supply management in Geneva last week, had a different reaction.
“Really, I think this gives us more time to lobby our politicians on our positions and the cost there would be if our tariffs were negotiated away,” she said.
Negotiators take August off and return in September with a meeting of WTO ministers planned for mid-October in Geneva to try to ensure enough compromises are made to make Hong Kong a success.
The greatest pressure is on the United States to make concessions on the way it subsidizes its farmers domestically and on the European Union to agree to allow more imports into its markets.
But other countries also will be expected to make concessions once the bargaining begins and eyes will be on Canada’s attempt to maintain its balanced export and protectionist position.
At a news conference July 29, European Union trade commissioner Peter Mandelson criticized Canada for signing a framework deal July 31, 2004 that put the wheat board monopoly on the negotiating table and then never followed through with a proposal to reflect that concession.
“The slowness of some WTO members to bring forth proposals on STEs (state trading entities) is not helping progress in this round,” he said.
Chief Canadian agriculture negotiator Steve Verheul said July 29 a dramatic Canadian gesture to move off its existing position would do little to help the talks.
“I don’t think there is any decision we could take that would have much influence in breaking the logjam,” he said. “It really has to start with the U.S. and EU.”
