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Cancun Keeps Climate Talks Alive
Negotiators beat low expectations in Cancun by forging agreement on several steps that will advance international co-operation on climate change. At the start of the negotiations, which ran from 29 November to 10 December, positions on future obligations were diametrically opposed. China and India said they would not endorse any agreement that did not commit developed…
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Doha Gets Nod amidst Wider Economic Tensions
At back to back summits of the world’s 20 leading economies and Pacific Rim countries held in November, world leaders called for the conclusion of the Doha Round in 2011, but failed to make significant progress on rebalancing global growth and trade. Heads of state of the G-20 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) recognised that…
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Lamy: Doha Countdown Starts Now
WTO Members are set to launch the end-game of the Doha Round negotiations with a view to bringing the global trade talks to a close by the end of 2011. In his address to the Trade Negotiations Committee meeting on 30 November, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy outlined an intensive work programme for the months ahead. The…
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Views Differ on WTO’s Generics Solution, IPR Enforcement
A rarely-used system intended to help poor countries import generic versions of patent-protected drugs was the main focus of discussions at the October session of the TRIPS Council. Developing countries also raised serious concerns over the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement. With regard to access to generics, WTO Members reviewed how well the so-called ‘paragraph 6 solution’ was…
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CTE Still Searching for a Way Forward
WTO members agree that they need to revitalise sluggish negotiations on liberalising trade in environmental goods. They just do not seem to be able to agree on how to do so. Even before the broader stagnation in the Doha Round over the past two years, WTO negotiations on the liberalisation for goods with an environmental purpose…
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The Race for Green Jobs: China’s Incentives under Attack
Vying for a bigger slice of the clean technology pie and attendant domestic jobs, the US is looking into launching WTO complaints over China’s green tech subsidies, export restrictions on raw materials and other measures Beijing says are necessary to put the country on a cleaner growth path. On 15 October, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk…
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Japan Protests Ontario’s Renewable Energy Subsidies
Japan has initiated a WTO challenge against Ontario’s green energy subsidies, alleging that they discriminate against foreign suppliers. At issue are stringent local content requirements in the province’s Feed-in Tariff Programme (FIT). FIT allows Ontario to subsidise electricity operators that use renewable energy if up to 60 percent of the inputs are manufactured in the province. The…
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Seal Dispute Update
The EU’s prohibition of trade in nearly all products derived from seals entered fully in force in late October after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected a moratorium requested by Inuit organisations, as well as commercial sealers and meat and pelt traders in Canada and Norway. The complainants had asked the EU to defer the…
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Emotional and Legal Stakes Are High in the Seals Dispute
The emerging dispute on the European Union’s import ban on seal products is likely to become a landmark case in WTO jurisdiction. It contains a mix of difficult policy issues, and may result in the first ever clarification of the relationship between animal welfare and international trade rules. The dispute began in November 2009, when…
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ACTA: Original Expectations and Future Implications
On 15 November, a group of forty mostly industrialised countries released the text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This article looks at the treaty’s possible implications for the global intellectual property system, as well as its backers and the developing countries hostile to it. One way to determine the significance of ACTA is to assess…
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ACTA: What Is In, What Is Out?
During the past year, the secrecy surrounding ACTA negotiations and the possible reach of some of its provisions had fuelled controversy and raised significant concerns among different stakeholders. Developing countries and public health groups, for example, had expressed worries about the inclusion of patent infringements in border measures in view of recent cases of detentions…
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Exports Are Up, but Fears Linger over Protectionism
The WTO’s latest report on developments in the international trading environment, released in November, warns that high unemployment in many countries is fuelling demand for protectionist measures, which could potentially threaten jobs and growth worldwide. Trade has bounced back strongly this year, and the WTO now forecasts a 13.5-percent increase in volume (measured by exports) from…
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Conflicting Rules & Clashing Courts: What Role for the WTO?
With the proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements, as well as free trade pacts, how can we avoid conflicts and promote coherence in the highly complex relationship between global trade and environmental governance? The dense web of global trade regulation is complemented by other international regimes addressing issues as diverse as labour standards, trade in diamonds from…
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A New Growth Industry: Trade Pacts Outside the WTO
It is virtually impossible to keep track of the myriad bilateral and regional free trade negotiations taking place around the globe. The summary below provides a small sample of recent developments. By mid-October 2010, nearly 200 regional trade agreements currently in force had been notified to the WTO, and another hundred were under negotiation. While older…
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US Update
In the wake of the November mid-term elections, a more bipartisan approach to trade may be emerging in Washington. Republican Kevin Brady, who is likely to head the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee come January, has singled out commerce as one of the few areas of opportunity for a ‘fresh start’ between President Obama…
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US-Korea Trade Deal Concluded
Following the partial renegotiation of the 2007 US-South Korea free trade agreement in early December, political support is growing in Washington, but so is opposition in Seoul. The reason behind the amendment negotiations was Washington’s need to obtain enough new concessions from Seoul to overcome persistent opposition from the US automobile and beef industries to the…
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EU Trade Concessions to Pakistan Fail to Obtain WTO Waiver
Two months after member states of the European Union decided to grant flood-hit Pakistan temporary trade concessions, market access for the most commercially important items was considerably narrowed. Not enough, however, to convince all WTO Members to support the package. Pakistan’s July 2010 monsoon floods covered an area larger than England, displaced some 20 million people…
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Time to Address Tough Issues in EU-Canada Trade Talks
With negotiations on a ‘comprehensive economic and trade agreement’ - CETA for short - between the EU and Canada nearing the end-game, several flash points have come into sharper focus, including intellectual property rights, public procurement and farmers’ rights. So far, opposition to the treaty has been more vocal on the Canadian side, where labour unions,…
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Agreement Reached on Access and Benefit-sharing
After ten years of difficult negotiations, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity have agreed on a treaty aimed at helping countries that provide genetic resources capture a share of the benefits arising from their use. The Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits was finally concluded in Nagoya…
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Lessons from the ‘Rooibos Robbery’
A controversy between Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, and the South African government illustrates the need for clear rules with regard to when the obligation to share the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources starts, and what that obligation covers. At issue are two plants found in South Africa, rooibos and honeybush, both…
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Searching for Transparency: Improving Patent Information to Increase Access to Medicines
The ability of developing and least-developed countries to procure affordable generic medicines continues to be hampered by a lack of transparency in patent information. While there has been an increase in electronic patent information since TRIPS, much more still needs be done. The globalisation of patent protection for medical products has meant changes for public health…
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What Gains from a Doha Agreement?
The biggest gains from a Doha Round agreement would come from locking in reforms governments have already undertaken rather than new trade-opening, trade experts say. In early November the WTO, the World Bank and ICTSD brought together several prominent trade economists to compare estimates for what a Doha Round agreement would be worth, both in terms…
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Meeting Calendar
WTO Meetings Jan. 10 Start of intensive negotiating sessions on rules, trade facilitation, trade and environment, intellectual property rights, and development Jan. 17 Start of intensive negotiating sessions on agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services and dispute settlement Other Meetings Jan. 11-12 First Sustainable Infrastructure Financing…
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Resources
Selected Documents Circulated at the WTO Council for Trade in Goods. 19 November 2010. Request for a WTO Waiver - Additional Autonomous Trade Preferences Granted by the European Union to Pakistan. Request by the EU. (G/C/W/640) Dispute Settlement. 29 November 2010. Australia - Measures Affecting the Importation of Apples from New Zealand. Report of the Appellate Body.…