A high-level informal meeting of trade and agriculture ministers in the Chinese city of Dalian has failed to make significant progress in breaking the deadlocks that threaten trade negotiations in Geneva.
The setback now puts more pressure on negotiators in Geneva to find deals.
With an end-of-July deadline looming at World Trade Organization talks to show progress on contentious agricultural issues and a pivotal meeting of ministers planned in Hong Kong for December, the spotlight was on ministers in Dalian to begin to make compromises.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Instead, they continued to utter general commitments to progress without moving off their fixed positions.
“There was an agreement that the negotiators will return to Geneva for the next two weeks to bring these discussions to some fruition,” federal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell said from Dalian July 13. “Nothing has been totally agreed to yet but I think there was progress and there certainly were commitments that we want to see the process move forward.”
The political inertia came on the heels of a plea from WTO director general Supachai Panitchpakdi to start to make compromises in the fourth year of the WTO talks or risk failure to reach substantial agreement in Hong Kong.
“Failure to get there will be a major setback for growth, development and the multilateral system,” he told negotiators in Geneva on the eve of the Dalian meeting. “You, the members, will have to decide whether that is an option.”
At the most, the ministers from more than 30 countries who gathered in China decided it is not yet time to make decisions that will alienate the domestic interest groups they have vowed to defend.
Canada continued to say it was finding support for its mixed position of looking for export opportunities while insisting it be able to defend its import-sensitive industries with high tariffs.
The United States apparently signaled it will make a substantive offer for subsidy reductions in the autumn when negotiations resume after an August break.
For Liam McCreery, a southern Ontario grain and oilseeds producer and president of the pro-free trade lobby Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, the lack of compromise this late in the exercise is frustrating.
He accuses the federal government of being on the defensive, so interested in protecting Canada’s import-sensitive sectors of dairy and poultry that it is passing up a chance to support radical liberalization for sectors that want to compete.
“This is a chance to create some trade openings and we should be taking them,” he said. McCreery and a CAFTA delegation of farmers, processors and traders will be in Geneva in late July to lobby for a more aggressive Canadian stance.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture and its supply management affiliates argue Canada should agree to nothing that would undermine one of the country’s most stable farm sectors.
In Geneva, agriculture negotiations chair Tim Groser said in late June he would like to be able to prepare a set of proposals for future progress before he leaves. He is quitting his WTO job to jump into New Zealand politics.
“By the end of July, I hope to be in a position to put down a paper capturing the level of convergence on key issues in each of the three pillars of export competition, domestic support and market access,” he told members in a late June assessment.
