Ministers from more than 25 of the world’s major trading powers will start trying again on Wednesday to break a deadlock in global trade talks.
With just over three months left before a self-imposed deadline for setting precise formulas for cutting trade barriers, major players at the 149-member World Trade Organisation (WTO) appear as far apart as ever on the vexing subject of farm trade, as well as market access for industrial goods.
Little seems to have changed since before December’s WTO meeting in Hong Kong, where members failed to agree on those formulas and only agreed a new, April 30 deadline for reaching that point.
That leaves the Doha round of talks — launched in Qatar’s capital in 2001 and meant to be completed by the end of this year — on a tight schedule. The major sticking points remain the same, too.
The United States, as well as key developing countries like Brazil and India, are demanding easier access to European Union farm markets.
But EU trade chief Peter Mandelson has warned other countries not to expect further cuts in farm import tariffs without offering their own cuts across all sectors, particularly in industrial goods and liberalising their service industries.
”I cannot sell a deal in which Europe gives, but gets nothing in return,” Mandelson said this week. ”That is not a negotiation, that is a capitulation. I won’t do it, and who would in my place?”
Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim countered that the latest signals from Brussels ”make us feel uneasy”.
US trade representative Rob Portman was arriving on Wednesday in Davos, where he will be meeting with his Swiss counterpart Joseph Deiss about a bilateral trade deal.
Portman and Mandelson were due to meet Wednesday evening and both had a hectic schedule of bilateral talks scheduled before serious multilateral talks kick off.
”The aim of the meeting is to discuss the next steps of the WTO Doha Round,” Deiss’ office said in a statement. ”The roughly 30 ministers expected to attend reflect the full spectrum of trade policy views in the framework of the ongoing WTO negotiations.” – Sapa-AP