France threatened yesterday to walk away from negotiations to launch global trade talks over the explosive issue of farm export subsidies, despite two years of work by the WTO to recover from Seattle's embarrassing failure.
"Really it is a sort of deal-breaker point," said French Trade Minister Francois Huwart over demands by other nations for an agenda that would see a ``phasing out'' of the subsidies.
Huwart's comments to journalists came hours before the midnight deadline, after five days of talks among the WTO's 142 members on a declaration that would set out the road map for a new trade round.
The declaration must be agreed to by all members. That didn't happen in 1999 in Seattle -- partially over the same issue -- dooming those talks.
Tuesday morning, negotiators were claiming "positive momentum" from a draft agreement to ensure poor countries have access to lifesaving drugs.
Senior US trade negotiators said "very substantial progress" had been made over four days of talks and a deal was "definitely very doable."
Trade ministers had the draft of an agreement on access to patented drugs for poor countries, as well as one to include a mandate to look at tightening anti-dumping rules, which developing countries wanted but Washington, worried about its steel and textile industries, had resisted.
Negotiators said agriculture was one of the last main stumbling blocks.
South Korea, Japan and Norway have agreed to a proposed text calling for the eventual "phasing out" of farm export subsidies, leaving the 15-nation European Union, and especially France, essentially alone. France, which benefits the most from the EU's farm budget, has a strong farmers lobby and presidential elections just six months away.
"We would accept failure of the round rather than a bad agreement," said Jean-Michel Lemetayer, president of France's main farmers lobbying group, who is in Doha.
US negotiators suggested the EU might be able to agree to talks on a phaseout of subsidies.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy