Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 9 • Number 10 • 29th May 2009

WTO Rules Group Inches along Fisheries Roadmap

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An informal meeting of the Negotiating Group on Rules inched forward slowly but largely avoided controversial issues at its 11-14 May meeting in Geneva. The group’s talks - which cover fisheries subsidies, anti-dumping, and horizontal subsidies disciplines - have been marked by long-standing disagreement over a few issues. But the chair of the committee, Ambassador Guillermo Valles Galmes of Uruguay, navigated around those questions last week and instead sought to “build momentum” in the less contentious areas of the talks, as one delegate put it.

Even if the main areas of controversy are avoided, it’s “important to keep going” in the talks, the delegate said. The only way that delegations will reach compromise on hot button issues will be through the slow, iterative process of the negotiations, he noted, adding that he did not expect the chair to produce a new draft text before the current round of talks has wrapped up.

Disagreement on fisheries roadmap comes early

Discussions on disciplines in the fisheries sector followed the outlines of a ‘roadmap’ for those talks that the chair issued at the end of last year (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 23 January 2009, http://ictsd.net/i/news/biores/38538/). The chair’s roadmap replaces the prior text, which contained controversial language calling for a ban on specific subsidies.

The rules group is charged with strengthening disciplines on subsidies in the fisheries sector. A particular challenge for the group on this front has been to balance the need to protect the world’s fish stocks from overfishing and the need to afford a just amount of ‘special and differential treatment’ to the world’s poorer countries, many of which rely heavily on the sector.

Delegations at the meeting continued to disagree on the possible scope of the negotiations on bans on subsidies in the fisheries sector. Several delegations said that government payments to support aquaculture and fish processing should be disallowed, but other Members disagreed. Many delegations pushed for a stronger focus on marine wild-capture fish, and supported a broad ban on fisheries subsidies, but other delegations disputed the need for such a broad prohibition.

Delegations also clashed over whether governments should be allowed to provide subsidies for small-scale fishing, worker retraining, and income support. Some delegations said there was a need fully exclude such incentives, while a number of delegations stressed that minimum exceptions were required.

Support for anti-dumping SDT in developing world

Beyond fisheries, delegates expressed a broad level of support for increasing special and differential treatment for developing countries when they are the focus of anti-dumping investigations, and also backed the notion of providing such countries with technical assistance to set up their own anti-dumping authorities. Ghana, speaking on behalf of the African Group and the Group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, called for a simplification of the WTO’s anti-dumping rules, indicating that such a shift would allow them to better exercise their rights in that regard.

‘Dumping’ refers to the exporting or goods at artificially low prices, a practice that can undercut producers in the importing market. The WTO Agreement on Anti-Dumping allows Member governments to place retaliatory ‘anti-dumping’ tariffs on the goods in question, so long as they can prove that dumping is indeed taking place and that it is injuring the competing domestic industry.

Delegates look at role of financial crisis

The Friends of the Anti-Dumping Negotiations, or FANs, a 16-country grouping that includes Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Taiwan, warned that their fellow WTO Members “need to avoid the unwarranted use” of anti-dumping measures. A WTO report released earlier this month revealed that new anti-dumping investigations were on the increase in the second half of 2008 (see Bridges Weekly, 13 May 2009, http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/46553/). Some say that the trend may be a reflection of increased protectionist tendencies amid the economic slowdown.

At the urging of the chair, the meeting featured a discussion on how the ongoing economic downturn might affect the group’s work on subsidies. China urged Members to limit their use of trade remedies, and warned that government stimulus packages could trigger an increase in countervailing-duty investigations in the future. But the EU, which said that it had been keeping a close eye on various stimulus policies, noted that governments have not violated the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, which governs such matters.

The next meeting of the Rules Group has been tentatively scheduled for the week of 29 June.

ICTSD Reporting.