Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 14 • Number 3 • 27th January 2010
Ministers to Discuss Swiss ‘Checklist’ for Doha Talks at Davos Meeting
Discuss this articleShare your views with other visitors, and read what they have to say
A new ‘checklist’ from Switzerland could provide a breath of fresh air for the WTO’s struggling Doha Round of trade talks, but some trade officials continue to doubt whether the organisation’s members will be able to meet a year-end goal for concluding the round.
On Saturday, Swiss President Doris Leuthard will host an informal meeting of trade ministers on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which is taking place in Davos, Switzerland from 27 to 31 January.
Trade ministers have held similar meetings at all of the Davos summits in recent years. The gatherings typically end with a call for renewed efforts to bring the Doha Round talks to a swift conclusion. This year’s gathering promises more of the same.
For this year’s meeting, Switzerland has put forward a ‘checklist‘ of tasks that should, “from a Swiss point of view,” be completed before trade officials convene for a Doha Round ‘stocktaking’ that is being planned for the end of March. That exercise is meant to help WTO members assess whether they will be able to conclude the talks, which are already in their ninth year, before the end of 2010 - a deadline that world leaders have insisted on repeatedly over the past eight months.
If the 2010 goal is to be achieved, however, WTO members will have to strike breakthrough framework accords in the early part of the year, many trade observers say, so that members will have ample time to ‘schedule’ their specific tariff and subsidy commitments. Analysts estimate that some developing countries might need up to nine months to complete this process.
With the clock ticking, Switzerland’s checklist could help streamline the WTO’s work over the eight weeks that remain before the end of March. The Swiss proposal - officially billed as a ‘non-paper’ - calls on the chairs of the negotiating committees on agriculture and industrial goods to produce new ‘draft modalities’ in advance of the stocktaking exercise. On services, the proposal calls for members to come to the end-March meeting “ready to decide…on a date to submit final revised offers” on how much and how quickly they will be willing to liberalise their services sectors.
Other items on Switzerland’s wish list for March include an annotated text on domestic regulations; a revised chair’s text on anti-dumping, subsidies and countervailing measures; a reduction in the number of brackets in the trade facilitation text; draft consolidated texts on trade and environment and environmental goods and services; and continued dedicated consultations on persistently divisive intellectual property issues. The checklist also identifies the “main open issues for ministerial consideration” in each area of the talks.
Saturday’s meeting of ministers in the snowy Swiss ski resort will be their first opportunity this year to assess the level of ambition for pushing for a conclusion to the Doha Round before the end of 2010. How they will respond to the Swiss checklist remains to be seen.
Back at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva, negotiations are just beginning to pick up for the year; the schedule of talks for February and March has filled up quickly. But it is not yet clear whether the renewed activity will translate into tangible movement in the negotiations. Many have their doubts.
The “common impression” among WTO delegates is that “nothing will happen” in the negotiations over the coming weeks, one trade official told Bridges. There is a general feeling that, come March, there will be nothing to take stock of, the official added.
All eyes on Washington
Much of the pessimism at WTO headquarters stems from persistent questions over the United States’ stance in the negotiations. WTO delegates have complained that the administration of US President Barack Obama has yet to truly engage in the Doha Round talks, and that US officials have simply asked for more from other WTO members without offering up significant concessions of their own.
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has acknowledged that politicians in Washington seem to have little appetite for further trade opening, especially given the country’s high levels of unemployment and still-fragile economy. Kirk has vowed to spend much of this year travelling the country to build support for freer trade.
“There are just too many people sceptical about how our trade works,” Kirk said this week in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Speaking at an event in Washington last week, David O’Sullivan, the European Commission’s Director General for Trade, offered his assessment of the US position.
“We understand fully that there is a significant lack of support in Washington for the current deal. And I honestly believe that everyone in Geneva is willing to look at what it takes to make the [Doha Round] politically acceptable to the United States,” O’Sullivan said.
“But, frankly,” he continued, “we can’t judge whether what US critics are asking for is an adjustment others might be able to accommodate, or whether it is instead an overhaul which unpicks the whole negotiation and takes us back to square one.”
O’Sullivan described himself as a Doha optimist but cautioned that “even the most optimistic have started to doubt the feasibility” of meeting the 2010 deadline. “The risk of yet another missed Doha deadline remains real,” he added.
ICTSD reporting; “US trade deals falter as unemployment, Democrats mute Obama,” BLOOMBERG, 26 January 2010.
One response to “Ministers to Discuss Swiss ‘Checklist’ for Doha Talks at Davos Meeting”
Add a comment
Enter your details and a comment below, then click Submit Comment. We’ll review and publish the best comments.
When will the EPAS empower communities, it looks to me like a white elephant,\ derrick sinjela Zambia