Canada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization says the current round of WTO talks is an historic opportunity for agricultural trade rules reform that is in danger of going off the rails.
A crucial meeting of trade and agriculture ministers is set for Mexico in September and the key negotiating countries remain far apart on crucial issues such as the rate of domestic subsidy reduction, the speed of export subsidy elimination and the extent that domestic markets should be forced to accommodate foreign competition.
Sergio Marchi said in a July 10 interview from Geneva that a breakthrough in the agricultural talks is crucial and significant signs of progress are needed soon. The world trading system and the relationship between developing and developed counties depends on it.
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This WTO negotiation is officially called the Doha Development Round because of promises made in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001 that both rich and poor would benefit from the outcome.
“This is an historic opportunity that really deserves an historic result,” said Marchi. “A failure in Cancun (Mexico) and all of a sudden you get a draining of ambition out of it.”
He said a key is how recent decisions by the European Union to reform its domestic agriculture policy system will influence the EU ability to be flexible at WTO talks.
Marchi does not see the EU reforms as the huge retreat from trade-distorting subsidies that Europeans are proclaiming and other countries are demanding.
The Europeans are not sharply cutting farm support spending but removing it from direct production support to more general farm support not tied to production and counted by the WTO as “green box” or unrestricted spending.
“It may be a different colour but ends up doing the same distortions,” said the trade ambassador.
