OTTAWA — The Cairns Group has a blunt message for the United States, the European Community and other big food traders — your commitment to liberalized trade is being watched.
The Cairns Group, a 13-member club of medium-sized and small trading countries formed eight years ago to promote liberalized trading rules, has decided to re-invent itself.
Now that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has been signed, the group has accomplished its founding goal.
This month at a meeting in Uruguay, members decided to remain affiliated to make sure the big players are implementing the GATT agreement properly. Canada has told other members of the group it will monitor American political attempts to write a new farm bill for 1995.
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It will provide Cairns members with analysis about whether the next American farm support program conforms to the spirit of the GATT deal and how it might affect markets.
“The Cairns group will stay together,” said MP Lyle Vanclief, parliamentary secretary to the agriculture minister and Canada’s representative at the Uruguay meeting.
“We feel there is a role in monitoring the results of our work (in getting a new GATT).”
Led by Australia and including Argentina, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand and Hungary, the Cairns groups lobbied through the seven-year GATT talks for a comprehensive deal that would liberalize agricultural markets and scale down the subsidy trade war.
Prepared a strategy
It prepared a common strategy that targeted both European and American positions, although the Europeans charged that the group more often than not acted as a stalking horse for the American fight against the European Common Agricultural Policy.
Now, having helped achieve rules to limit both European and American subsidy programs and to force all countries to reduce import barriers, Cairns members decided that their influence as smaller traders could best be exercised jointly.
“We have developed a work plan that assigns tasks to each of the countries,” said Vanclief.
“Since we will be paying close attention to American developments for our own interest, we have agreed to share our analysis with the others.”
