The next round of world trade talks will be launched later this year when ministers gather to review World Trade Organization affairs, according to Canada’s former top WTO negotiator.
It will be designed as a three- or four-year negotiation and will be welcomed by grain producers as a chance to reduce trade-distorting subsidies around the world.
John Weekes, a Geneva, Switzerland-based trade consultant who served until the late 1990s as Canada’s chief WTO trade negotiator, said a new round will start in November.
During a speech to a Dairy Farmers of Canada policy conference held two weeks ago in Ottawa, Weekes said 2001 offers the last best chance to launch the trade negotiation, which was supposed to start more than a year ago in Seattle.
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“I think it will happen,” he said.
Weekes said a new pro-free trade American administration, a growing sense that existing WTO rules are not adequate, and that too many issues are being decided by trade dispute panels all point to a need for new talks.
“There is this big new factor of a rejuvenated American administration,” he said. “I just think the world cannot afford not to.”
Since the launch of trade talks collapsed in Seattle, Washington, in December 1999, WTO officials have been trying to rebuild confidence in the organization’s ability to steer a new trade pact to completion.
Significant gaps continue to exist between key players, including the European Union, the United States, Japan and the Cairns Group of medium-sized traders, including Canada.
If the divisions can be narrowed enough by November to find agreement on what should be negotiated, Canadian trade liberalization advocates, including grain and livestock sectors, would cheer.
However, Canadian dairy farmers are uneasy about the government’s stance heading into the talks.
Do the politicians and bureaucrats who say they will protect supply management understand what they are promising and what would be required?
At their meeting, DFC delegates affirmed their view that supply management can only be preserved if: high tariffs on over-quota products keep cheaper foreign product out; domestic pricing based on farmers’ cost of production remains in effect; and production is tightly controlled to match supply with demand.
But new president Leo Bertoia from Langham, Sask., told delegates the DFC board remains concerned about ambiguity in the government’s commitment to the domestic system.
Retiring DFC president John Core was more explicit.
“For 35 years, we have used our marketing powers to the benefit of our industry and it is up to our government to ensure that nothing at WTO limits our ability to do so in the future,” he said.
“The government must deliver on their promise to support supply management and they must be clear in understanding what it means.”
Several years ago, Canadian Dairy Commission president Guy Jacob caused industry outrage when he said that Canada’s 1994 decision to sign the new world trade agreement marked the beginning of the end of supply management.
Last week, Core said the federal Liberals must not allow that prediction to come true. He said the government must not sign any agreement to lower over-quota tariffs.
