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Wto trade deal for farm exports { November 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/051218/b121836.htmlhttp://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/051218/b121836.html
WTO trade deal sets 2013 for rich countries to end farm export subsidies
18:59:24 EST Dec 18, 2005
ELAINE KURTENBACH
HONG KONG (CP) - WTO negotiators cut a last-minute deal Sunday on ending farm export subsidies and other trade barriers, claiming modest progress toward their goal of forging a global trade pact by late 2006.
The agreement was a badly needed breakthrough for the World Trade Organization, whose credibility was on the line following devastating collapses of two of its last three key meetings.
Past WTO gatherings served as a battlefield for anti-globalization protests, but Hong Kong authorities managed to prevent violent clashes between police and activists from spoiling the talks. Although riots erupted outside the convention centre Saturday, a march Sunday by 5,000 demonstrators ended without violence.
Negotiating until the very last minute, delegates from both wealthy and poor countries reconciled their conflicting interests, agreeing to eliminate farm export subsidies by 2013, work toward dismantling trade barriers in manufacturing and services and to provide greater protections and support for developing countries.
"You put the round back on track. You gave it a new sense of urgency," a jubilant WTO chief Pascal Lamy told the delegates, many of whom had worked almost round-the-clock thrashing out their differences.
Developing countries felt the final agreement addressed many of their concerns, from opening up rich countries' farming markets to measures that could enable the world's poorest countries to increase their tiny share in global trade.
"We welcome it," said India's Trade Minister Kamal Nath. "It is focused and it strikes at various problems of developing countries."
Prime Minister Paul Martin, campaigning in Regina, said the terms of the deal will be welcome news to Canadian wheat, dairy and poultry farmers.
"Unfair agricultural subsidies are coming down," he said. "This is good for Canada, and it is good for Canadian farmers."
But the lack of progress at the six-day meeting left some disappointed and puts pressure on the WTO if it hopes to conclude a binding global trade treaty by the end of next year.
"The agreement we have reached, if it didn't make the conference a success it certainly saved it from failure," said EU trade chief Peter Mandelson, whose delegation came under heavy pressure to cut barriers protecting Europe's agriculture market.
"We would have preferred a far more ambitious result, but, compared to the failures in Seattle and Cancun, these talks have restored hope for a more open and fair trading system, " said Perrin Beatty, President and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters at the WTO negotiations in Hong Kong.
"For a country as trade-dependent as Canada, it's a small, but welcome Christmas present," he said.
Seventy per cent of Canada's gross domestic product and one in five jobs are linked to trade.
"This text provides scope for Canada to achieve its objectives in key areas," International Trade Minister Jim Peterson and Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Andy Mitchell, who attended the meeting, said in a joint statement Sunday.
"A number of Canadian proposals and ideas are reflected in the Declaration, specifically on non-agricultural market access and domestic support to agriculture. We are also pleased that Canada's objectives have been met on the treatment of sensitive products and on exporting state trading enterprises," the statement said.
Pushing back the date for eliminating farm export subsidies to 2013 was a key demand of the 25-country EU, which held out against intense pressure from Brazil and other developing countries to end the payments by 2010. Developing countries say such government farm support to promote exports undercut the competitive advantage of poor farmers.
The agreement, approved by all the WTO's 149 member countries and territories, calls for rich countries to eliminate all export subsidies on cotton by 2006 and gives the world's poorest countries special trade privileges.
Wealthy countries committed to giving duty-free and quota-free privileges to at least 97 per cent of products exported by the so-called least developed countries, which are countries with annual per capita incomes of $750 US, by 2008.
The agreement falls far short of the delegates' original ambition for Hong Kong: producing a detailed outline for a final trade treaty that would conclude the so-called Doha round that began in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, to pay particular attention to the needs of poorer countries.
Moving members a step toward that goal, the agreement makes April 30, 2006, their new deadline for working out formulas for cutting farm and industrial tariffs and subsidies.
"The progress made today really lays the groundwork for negotiations going forward," said Susan Schwab, a deputy U.S. trade representative.
She said the progress was a good omen for trade negotiations which were battered in 2003 when delegates from developing countries walked out on WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, charging that their interests were being ignored.
WTO members agreed to ambitious cuts in industrial tariffs, linking them to similar cuts in farm trade, though poor countries were given more flexibility for such reforms.
The deal also calls for market opening measures for services such as banking and insurance, a key concern for the EU, U.S. and other industrial countries.
Activists and other critics of the WTO claim its work on opening up markets benefits big companies and the rich at the expense of ordinary workers and the poor.
"There is no such thing as free trade," said Deena Hoff, a representative of the U.S. National Family Farm coalition. "There are winners and there are losers, and farmers and working people and the environment are the losers.
"When you put a price tag on every bowl of rice, on every drink of water, on every life, you are not supporting the people of the world," she said.
© The Canadian Press, 2005
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