Thursday, July 27, 2006
Trade Groups Urge WTO to Get That Old Magic Back
Major business organizations from the US, the EU, Japan, Australia and Brazil petitioned the WTO to restart talks as soon as possible. They were concerned that with the Doha Development Round on hold, countries might begin negotiating smaller trade agreements among themselves that would complicate trade on the world scale by creating regional tangles of restrictions.
The US Chamber of Commerce issued a statement expressing its disappointment in the shutdown of the talks. The statement called for renewal of the president's current special trade negotiating powers (which would send any agreement to Congress for an up-or-down vote so that nobody can attach riders or amendments), which expire June 30, 2007. The Chamber of Commerce also criticized other countries for being too stingy with their offers.
Part of the intention of the Doha Round of talks (named for the city in Qatar where the issues under negotiation were first raised, in 2001) is to help poorer countries get a leg up in the global economy by liberalizing trade-- basically by lowering protectionist policies that rich nations use to lock smaller ones out of the marketplace. The issues up for discussion were agricultural market access, domestic agricultural protectionism, and non-agricultural market access (read: manufactured goods).
Six of the member groups spent so much time fighting over the agricultural issues that the third issue was never even brought up. (The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article here that explains some of the details.) The EU blames the US, saying we weren't willing to make a serious effort to address the way we subsidize our farmers, and the US blames the EU for not wanting to lower import tariffs sufficiently.
The head of the WTO, meanwhile, says that talks haven't "failed", they're just "in suspension". Which sounds like something a jilted boyfriend might say: "She didn't dump me, we're just on a break."
For the best breakdown of this very complicated issue (seriously, it's like trying to explain Twin Peaks), you can go to the BBC's in-depth section on world trade issues. They have an archive of articles as well as some "executive summary" type features explaining the issues surrounding the talks, who the major players are, and a few real-world case studies of how ordinary workers and business owners are affected by these high-up decisions.
Note, however, that because the BBC is a UK body, it cannot help but have a lot of analyists with a pro-EU bias. The straight news articles are generally evenhanded.
The US Chamber of Commerce issued a statement expressing its disappointment in the shutdown of the talks. The statement called for renewal of the president's current special trade negotiating powers (which would send any agreement to Congress for an up-or-down vote so that nobody can attach riders or amendments), which expire June 30, 2007. The Chamber of Commerce also criticized other countries for being too stingy with their offers.
Part of the intention of the Doha Round of talks (named for the city in Qatar where the issues under negotiation were first raised, in 2001) is to help poorer countries get a leg up in the global economy by liberalizing trade-- basically by lowering protectionist policies that rich nations use to lock smaller ones out of the marketplace. The issues up for discussion were agricultural market access, domestic agricultural protectionism, and non-agricultural market access (read: manufactured goods).
Six of the member groups spent so much time fighting over the agricultural issues that the third issue was never even brought up. (The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article here that explains some of the details.) The EU blames the US, saying we weren't willing to make a serious effort to address the way we subsidize our farmers, and the US blames the EU for not wanting to lower import tariffs sufficiently.
The head of the WTO, meanwhile, says that talks haven't "failed", they're just "in suspension". Which sounds like something a jilted boyfriend might say: "She didn't dump me, we're just on a break."
For the best breakdown of this very complicated issue (seriously, it's like trying to explain Twin Peaks), you can go to the BBC's in-depth section on world trade issues. They have an archive of articles as well as some "executive summary" type features explaining the issues surrounding the talks, who the major players are, and a few real-world case studies of how ordinary workers and business owners are affected by these high-up decisions.
Note, however, that because the BBC is a UK body, it cannot help but have a lot of analyists with a pro-EU bias. The straight news articles are generally evenhanded.
