OTTAWA – If it has not already happened by then, the next round of international trade talks will make it a priority to outlaw agricultural export subsidies, says Canadian trade minister Art Eggleton.
Along with allies from the Cairns Group of medium and small-sized food trading nations, Canada last week warned the United States and the European Union to back away from what appear to be early moves toward a new food trade war, fuelled by subsidies.
“I hope the export subsidy issue gets resolved before that,” Eggleton said Dec. 12 by telephone from Singapore, where he joined ministers from 128 countries in the first World Trade Organization ministerial meeting.
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But if not, the next round of agricultural negotiations beginning in 1999 will have as a goal “disciplines on agricultural export credits and the elimination of export subsidies.”
In Singapore, the WTO trade ministers went no further than to agree that in 1997, preparatory work will begin for the launch of the agriculture talks in 1999.
The Cairns Group fleshed that out by holding a separate meeting and issuing a declaration making clear their own goals for the next round.
It included a warning to the European Union and the United States not to launch another trade war.
The EU recently started to use export subsidies on some of its wheat sales and the Cairns group, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil and the Philippines, said they “open the door to the risk of a new export subsidy confrontation.”
Eggleton said it was a preoccupation.
“We call upon them to refrain from the re-introduction or intensification of such measures, which clearly distort agricultural world markets and have a significant adverse effect on the trading opportunities and market returns of Cairns Group countries,” said a statement issued by the group, created in 1986 to push for agricultural trade liberalization in the last round of world trade talks.
Goals to be set
Eggleton said the agricultural goals for the next round of trade talks will be identified during the 1997 preparatory talks.
However, there is a general understanding they will include further liberalization of trade through agreements to speed up and extend the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers.
The Cairns Group said it also wants the WTO to ensure “full implementation by all members of all Uruguay Round commitments (from the last trade agreement).”
During the Singapore meetings, agricultural advisers to the American delegation issued a statement calling for changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement to make it conform better to world trade rules.
They were protesting a recent NAFTA panel ruling that Canadian supply management tariffs are legal under NAFTA.
Eggleton said the Americans did not raise the issue formally.
“It is hard to understand what they (American farm groups) are getting at here,” he said. “They obviously did not like the supply management decision but there has been no indication from the American delegation.”
He said the main U.S. objective at the trade talks was the successful deal to regulate the trade of information technology.
