Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 14 • Number 30 • 8th September 2010

WTO Ag Chair to stand down in April 2011

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The chair of the WTO’s agricultural trade negotiations, New Zealand Ambassador David Walker, will take up a new post in Wellington from April 2011. WTO members have yet to begin the process of deciding who should replace him, trade sources said.

Walker, who was appointed to chair the talks on farm tariffs and subsidies in April last year, will take up the role of deputy secretary with responsibility for the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa at New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He is the third New Zealander to have chaired the trade body’s farm talks since the troubled Doha Round negotiations were launched in 2001.

Despite Walker’s efforts to reinvigorate the discussions, they have remained largely deadlocked since talks broke down in July 2008. Since then, a lack of high-level political leadership has been widely seen as having undermined prospects for further progress in the round.

Walker has nonetheless focused delegates’ attention on the data that they will need to provide to the WTO once an outline deal has been finalised - a process known as ’scheduling’ member governments’ commitments. He has also galvanised discussion on the format in which this data will need to be provided.

One delegate suggested that the April departure date would create a window of opportunity for WTO members to finalise a blueprint deal in the months after the US Congressional elections in November. It would also allow time for governments to schedule their commitments before the end of next year, potentially allowing the round to be concluded by the end of 2011, before the start of the US presidential election campaign makes politicians there skittish about controversial trade issues.

Others however expressed scepticism about prospects for the talks, suggesting that the outcome of the congressional elections was unlikely to provide a fresh impetus for the round. “The overall political picture doesn’t look too good”, said one trade source, who warned that there was “no basis” for the chair issuing a revised draft negotiating text given the minimal progress to date.

Walker plans to reconvene agriculture delegates for talks on 27 and 28 September, following the end of the WTO’s traditional summer break.

ICTSD reporting; “Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade makes new senior appointment,” NEW ZEALAND MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND TRADE PRESS RELEASE, 3 September 2010.