Six of the leading players in the long-running global trade talks are to meet in London next month for what is being billed as a ”collective striptease” to unblock deadlocked negotiations through a series of mutual concessions.
With time running out before the end-of-April deadline for deals on agricultural and manufacturing tariffs, the two days of talks at the Indian high commission are designed to broker simultaneous compromises to satisfy both developed and developing nations.
Sources close to the meeting — to start on March 10 — said that the aim was a deal in which deeper cuts in support for farmers in the European Union, the United States and Japan would be matched by concessions from India and Brazil on manufactured goods and by China on services.
”The meeting may not result in full agreement,” said one source, ”but we hope to be in a position where it is possible to close the remaining gaps over the subsequent six to seven weeks. It will be a collective striptease in which everybody says, ‘This is what we’ve got.”’
The talks will be hosted by India’s Trade Minister, Kamal Nath, and follow weeks of intense discussions among trade negotiators in Geneva after the inconclusive meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong Kong last December. They will be attended by the EU, India, the US, Japan, Brazil and Australia.
Talks are now bogged down in a dispute between the West and the leading developing countries.
The EU has come under pressure to offer better access to its market for lower-cost producers of farm products elsewhere in the world, but wants better opportunities for its industrial exporters in Brazil and India in return.
After the failure to reach an agreement in Hong Kong, the WTO’s 150 members gave themselves until the end of April to settle their differences in agricultural and manufactured goods.
The G6 is hoping the two-day London meeting will come up with formulas in agriculture and manufacturing that will allow negotiators in Geneva to ink in the details over the coming weeks. — Â