Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 13 • Number 42 • 9th December 2009

WTO Ministerial Lifts Hopes for Doha, but Scepticism Lingers

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The WTO’s seventh ministerial conference, which ran from 30 November to 2 December, largely met expectations, trade delegates said this week. But the meeting, which was billed as a no-surprises ‘housekeeping’ exercise, also produced a somewhat unexpected political push for the WTO’s Doha Round trade talks.

“It was a worthwhile ministerial insofar as it showed that the WTO was still alive,” said one developing country delegate, who added that he was sure that the gathering will lead to “renewed optimism,” at least for a time, in the Doha talks.

The Doha Round was officially off the agenda of the three-day meeting, which took place less than two kilometres from the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva. But WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said before the gathering that he hoped members would use the occasion to indicate “how they see engagement in the Doha negotiations post-December.”

On several occasions in the past year, world leaders from a broad swath of countries have called for the talks, which were launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, to be brought to a close by the end of next year. But trade officials say that if that goal is to be achieved, the negotiations will have to see significant progress over the next few months.

Ministers acknowledged as much last week, and began to set a tentative timetable for bringing the talks to a close. The G-20 developing-country coalition agreed before the meeting began that there should be a “multilateral opportunity, early next year” to drive progress. The Cairns Group of efficient farm exporters said the next day that a framework deal on agriculture should be struck by early next year, with ministers gathering “in the early part of 2010…to ensure the round is on track for conclusion.” Those calls were echoed by similar statements from other ministers and groupings.

Finally, in the ‘chair’s summary’ released on the final day of the meeting, the conference chair, Chilean Finance Minister Andrés Velasco, summed up the various calls: “Ministers reaffirmed the need to conclude the round in 2010 and for a stocktaking exercise to take place in the first quarter of next year,” the document said.

The call for a stocktaking exercise “was not an official decision,” said Mario Matus, Chile’s Ambassador to the WTO, in an interview with Bridges, but there was “a clear understanding” that such a gathering would take place, probably in March or April. He noted, however, that the ‘level’ of the meeting - namely, whether it would involve ministers - had not been set.

Matus described the outcome on ‘stocktaking’ as remarkable, given that the conference was not officially intended to produce any forward movement in the Doha talks.

All eyes on Washington

This is not the first time that trade officials have set a deadline for the Doha talks and promised to pick up the pace of the negotiations. WTO members have vowed at previous gatherings to conclude the Doha talks by the end of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. All of those deadlines were ultimately missed.

This time, many officials worry that one WTO member in particular - the United States - could cause the process to stumble.

Many delegates have been grumbling privately in recent weeks that the administration of US President Barack Obama has yet to fully engage in the trade talks. On Monday, a high-ranking British official made such criticisms public.

“I think if you want a deal, you have to be active in the negotiations. And whether it’s fair or not, I think there is a sense that there isn’t that visible engagement” from the United States, Gareth Thomas, the British Minister for International Development, said on Monday during a visit to Washington, according to media reports.

“It was striking the number of countries’ ministers who spoke to me, commenting on the apparent lack of visible US activity on Doha…That was certainly the prevailing mood in Geneva last week,” Thomas added.

A developing country official confirmed that sentiment. The US is “the main stumbling block” to the conclusion of the Doha Round, the delegate said. Trade officials from Washington are saying that they need greater clarity on what the United States will gain from a Doha Round deal before they ask Congress to grant the administration greater negotiating authority. But the developing country delegate dismissed this argument as “disingenuous.”

Another official was more sympathetic to the US position. “It’s easy for people to [blame the US], to point to one country and say it’s up to them,” he said, noting that the situation was likely more complicated than it appeared.

‘Housekeeping’ and bilaterals

Beyond the Doha talks, last week’s ministerial conference saw ministers engage in ‘housekeeping’ exercises meant to review the overall functioning of the organisation. Ambassador Matus of Chile stressed that the meeting had proven that two of the ‘pillars’ of the WTO - implementation and dispute settlement - are “alive and well,” even if the third pillar, the negotiations, is struggling.

The official activities of the conference helped sharpen members’ focus on the WTO’s regular work, Matus added. He noted that the chair’s summary that was released at the end of the meeting included strong wording on the importance of maintaining a strong development focus in WTO activities, including for Least Developed Countries and Small and Vulnerable Economies.

On the sidelines of the official ‘working sessions’ and plenary speeches that were organised by the WTO secretariat, ministers engaged in bilateral and group meetings that they had arranged themselves.

“Bilaterals were extremely useful,” Matus noted, adding that the closed-door meetings of ministers were much more numerous than had been expected.

Also on the sidelines of the meeting, the ministerial witnessed the signing of a South-South trade deal (see Bridges Daily Update, 2 December 2009, http://ictsd.org/i/trade-and-sustainable-development-agenda/63939/) and some further progress toward an agreement on banana tariffs (see Bridges Daily Update, 1 December 2009, http://ictsd.org/i/wto/geneva/daily-updates-2009/geneva-2009-bridges-daily-updates/63433/, and related article, this issue).

The ministers also agreed that the WTO’s next ministerial conference should be held in two years’ time, as per the organisation’s rules. The location of that meeting has not been set.

ICTSD reporting; “US dragging heels in Doha Round talks - source,” REUTERS, 7 December 2009.