Trade ministers from more than 140 countries signed an agreement on November 14 to launch a new round of talks on the global trade liberalization, with an aim to boost the tottering world economy.
The hard-won agreement will boost the international economy at a time when many countries are teetering on the brink of a recession exacerbated by the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. It will also breathe a new life into the WTO. which was negatively affected by the failure to reach a similar agreement in Seattle two years ago.
The World Bank predicts that launching a new cycle of market-expansion talks, coupled with related reforms, could add a whopping $2.8 trillion to the global wealth by 2015-a decade after the talks are expected to end.
The EU arrived in Doha, Qatar, with high hopes of launching a comprehensive round of trade negotiations, but its ministers finally realized that something was amiss, and accepted that very little of the EU's ambitious agenda should remain in the declaration of the Fourth Ministrial Meeting of the WTO.
The difference between the EU and the U.S. lies in policies concerning farm subsidies and anti-dumping laws. The U.S. agricultural products were targets of the anti-dumping measures of other countries, much to the annoyance of the U.S. The Keynesian Group, including Canada, Australia and some Latin American countries, such as Argentina, said they would accept the draft declaration, indicating their support for the U.S..
The EU strongly opposed taking the reduction of agricultural export subsidies as opening subjects of discussion for the talks, and instead called for discussions concerning non-agricultural matters, such as the protection of rural development subsidies, which met with opposition from the U.S..
Prior to the Doha meeting, Japan had two concerns-an open agricultural market would arouse the dissatisfaction of domestic farmers, while a discussion of its fishing cases at the WTO meeting under the environmental protection agenda would give Japan a passive role in the negotiations, as its fishing policies, especially that on whale hunting, had already been attacked by the international community.
Following several rounds of discussions in Doha, however, the U.S. and Japan reached a compromise to jointly isolate the EU, which is believed to have connections with Japanese Prime Minister Tunichiro Koizumi's previous letter to President Bush, in which Japan promised the U.S. that it would play an important role in the Doha negotiation and would cooperate with the U.S. Since Japan has a tendency to compete with the U.S. in bilateral matters but collaborate with it and follow its lead when the U.S. needs its help in global matters. Japan's decision at the Doha meeting was no exception.
A consensus eluded the ministers right until the end when India, a vocal defender of its national interests, stated its reservations about opening talks on competition codes, investment rules and other areas which it feared would place developing countries at a disadvantagous position next to their developed counterparts.
India, in fact, once claimed that if the developed countries did not meet the demands of the developing countries in lifting textile quotas, it would reject plans to begin new trade negotiations. Its refusal to budge sent officials scrambling from draft amendments to a carefully constructed text put together in the previous six days and over two all-night bargaining sessions.
Complicated as it was, the agreement finally materialized, and some developing countries accepted the agreement though they ended up making some concessions on environmental and trade issues. Nevertheless, they resolved the challenges concerning the protection of intellectual property and public health, as well as those relevant to the implementation of the Uruguay Round, agricultural subsidies, and limits on anti-dumping laws concerning textiles from developed countries. |