TORONTO – There will be a successful conclusion to current World Trade Organization talks and any sector that thinks it can avoid subsidy or tariff cuts is mistaken, the chair of the WTO agriculture talks said Dec. 6.
“There will be substantial access improvement for every product,” Tim Groser, New Zealand ambassador to the WTO, said in a teleconference speech from Geneva to a conference on WTO agricultural negotiations. “Any lobby in that room (in Toronto) that has an opposite opinion is making a serious political error.”
However, he said the timing and shape of the final deal are unknown even if the outcome is not.
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“I’m extremely optimistic,” he said, noting that each of the previous negotiating rounds has produced agreement, flawed as some of them were. “Don’t ask me how it will be done or when it will be done but it will be done.”
His comments came during a conference organized by Ontario and federal governments, along with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
Groser tried to walk a fine line when asked conflicting questions by a supply management representative and Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance president Liam McCreery about the talks.
He said the questions reflected the extremes of protection and export enhancement that are embedded in the Canadian negotiating position. Most countries have both export sectors and import sensitive sectors but Canada’s is a striking case, he said.
He told the conference that the WTO agreement will try to deal with both sides.
While seeking deep trade barrier cuts and trade-distorting subsidy cuts, there also will be recognition that different rules are needed for sensitive products.
But there will be no immunity from the WTO decision that all products must become more trade liberalized, Groser said. In Canada, supply-managed sectors have insisted there must be no reduction in over-quota tariffs and any increase in imports must come through expanded volume quotas.
It is the government’s official position.
“There will be no insulation of any product from some liberalization,” Groser told McCreery.
The exchange led to a pointed question later for agriculture minister Andy Mitchell.
In a speech to the conference, Mitchell said Canada supports increased market access but not at the expense of domestic marketing systems such as supply management agencies. Any deal must have “flexibility” that allows countries to have their own domestic marketing systems.
“These systems are good systems. They have stood the test of time,” he said. “They have been beneficial to producers and to Canadians as a whole.”
Stephanie Jones of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association rose to challenge the minister, asking why the government does not accept that protected domestic producers are not in the spirit of the WTO and hurt processors through higher prices. The government should be planning transition programs to help those industries become more competitive.
“I don’t start from the position that there is an either-or in these negotiations,” said Mitchell, to applause from supply-management supporters in the room. Any agreement must have the “flexibility” to allow countries to support both exporters and import-sensitive sectors.
Groser said the eventual WTO agreement cannot throw affected farmers on the “scrap heap” and in order to sell the deal to their voters, governments must be able to show where there are gains for their producers and how governments can compensate those hurt by the new rules.
And he told Mike Dungate from Chicken Farmers of Canada that one of supply management’s arguments is correct. After the last negotiation in which countries agreed to allow imports of five percent of the domestic market in each product through a quota rate tariff, many countries found ways not to do it.
Dungate said Canada did do it and should get credit for that and not have to open up more access in lockstep with countries that offer less.
Groser said the result of the last WTO round was a “mess” on the issue of quota rate tariffs and any new agreement must be “coherent and equitable.”
