Trade-oriented MPs and senators returning to Parliament Hill in mid- September will find on their desks a bleak assessment about the prospects for a successful conclusion to world trade talks.
Ottawa-based trade analyst Peter Clark, long a WTO skeptic, said in an analysis distributed to MPs and senators this summer that the nine-year-old Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations is all but dead, even if politicians are not willing to concede the point.
“Ministers now seem determined to avoid public failures,” he wrote.
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“Negotiations remain deadlocked, so comatose that former supporters of the round and champions of multilateral trade liberalization now realize the WTO trade liberalization system is dysfunctional and multilateral trade liberalization is on a slippery slope to stagnation.”
Clark argued that the WTO structure of 153 members each with a veto on a deal is not practical, “not suited to the large and divergent membership … (and) seriously in need of reform.”
He said the stalled negotiations were launched in November 2001 for “geopolitical reasons” to illustrate that international co-operation and resolve were possible after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
However, he said the international willingness to make the necessary compromises to forge a deal aimed at helping developing nations was never there.
“There has been far too much pretending that significant consensus exists when it does not, creating an artificial and unsupported agenda with serial failures to narrow gaps and to close.”
He also argued that the benefits of the WTO agreements for Canadian exporters are exaggerated and the role that Canada’s defense of supply management plays in thwarting a deal is overstated.
Clark disagreed with Canadian agricultural export sectors who argue that at least $3 billion in new market opportunities are possible if a Doha deal is signed.
“Canada is not on anyone’s list of winners of any size.”
He said Canadian WTO boosters are afflicted by blind faith in the theory of the benefits of free trade.
Clark, who has represented Canada’s supply managed sectors at WTO talks, said those who criticize Canada for defending the protectionist program are overlooking the fact that Canada imports more dairy products as a percentage of national consumption than the United States or the European Union.
It also doesn’t pay the massive dairy subsidies available to American and European industries.
Clark argues that Canada is not a big enough WTO player to make or break the talks.
“To suggest that any Canadian policies, initiatives or practices will make or break the deal … is a perplexing mix of self-flattery and self-delusion.”
Meanwhile, in a recently published analysis, Toronto trade lawyer and former diplomat Lawrence Herman took the opposite view.
He complained that Canada’s refusal to compromise on agricultural protections has left the country isolated at the WTO and on the sidelines of Pacific Rim trade negotiations.
“To play a leading role on the international stage at the WTO and in Asia-Pacific trade, Canada’s position can’t be hamstrung by retrograde policies that are out of step with the rest of the world and inconsistent with Canada’s broader national interests,” Herman wrote.
