RISING farm group dissatisfaction towards free trade negotiations and political stalling threatens to derail the Doha round until 2013, a leading United States Trade negotiator has warned.
Robert Thompson, a University of Illinois professor and a member of the US government’s trade advisory panel, was one of three speakers at the ABARE conference in Canberra last week to warn that the Doha Round was unlikely to conclude this year, as tabled.
Professor Thompson blamed the “rapid rise in anti-globalisation” among farm groups, unions and green groups for eroding its government’s support of free trade.
“Realistically there is no way with 10 per cent unemployment that we will see trade negotiators moving forward this year,” Professor Thompson said.
“2011 is questionable, but I don’t think unemployment will come down fast enough and 2012 is unlikely due to the presidential election. If the economy is moving again then I think a window might open up in 2013.”
He said trade had “hardly been mentioned” by the president in his first year and while the United States leader had relayed “on a couple” of occasions that Doha needed to be signed off there was “no evidence negotiators had licence to negotiate".
The comments were at odds to the encouraging words spoken by the Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Trade Anthony Byrne, earlier that day, who reiterated WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy's words made last month that the 2010 timeframe set by the G20 was “achievable”.
“While a handful of difficult issues remain, including the Special Safeguard Mechanism, sensitive product entitlement, Tariff Rate Quota creation and cotton, the vast majority of a Doha deal on agriculture has already been completed,” Mr Byrne said.
With the Doha Round as it currently stands expected to include the complete elimination of export subsidies by the end of 2013, Mr Byrne said “getting the Doha deal done remained a number one trade policy priority.”
New Zealand's chief trade negotiator, Crawford Falconer, who has just stepped down after four years as chairman of the round's agriculture negotiations, told the conference that a significant change in political will needed to be made to re-direct trade talks.
While this had occurred at a Pittsburgh summit late last year when the G20 leaders instructed Trade Ministers to conclude the Doha Round in 2010, Mr Falconer reasoned that a number of the Minister’s “fingers and toes would have been crossed”.
Ministers were set to meet this month to conclude a broad deal on tariff cuts in agriculture and manufacturing, so the rest of the round could follow.
“We are in trouble – lets not kid ourselves,” Mr Falconer said. “We are at risk of being adrift, and that is an intensely political question that needs some political attention.”
While he acknowledged that the talks were 80pc complete, it was the last 20pc that troubled him.
"Lots of people fail in the last kilometres of a marathon," he said.
Former WTO trade negotiator and now Professor of International Trade at the University of Adelaide, Professor Andrew Stoler, proposed a new negotiating strategy that involved a critical mass agreement between key exporters and importers in specific regions instead of the current “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” arrangement.
Professor Stoler said WTO’s rule that every country had to agree before talks could move forward meant that certain countries could dictate proceedings and was flawed by the fact that it did not take into account each countries interest or relative importance to trade.
“Like it or not we're probably stuck with the mess on the table, but we have shown there is a better alternative,” he said.
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