Top negotiators prepared to turn to fresh proposals yesterday in a bid to nail a new global trade free trade pact despite growing discord and warnings that years of painstaking negotiations could unravel at the last minute.
Squabbles among emerging economies threatened to shatter fragile gains in the quest for an agreement, as top negotiators slogged on into a second week of talks.
Delegates said much remained unresolved after a meeting late on Sunday that sought to cement a tentative breakthrough on farming and industrial products.
PHOTO: AFP
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab accused emerging economies of delaying an agreement.
“We had a path on Friday for a successful outcome on Friday night. It wasn’t perfect, but it was delicately balanced and had a strong endorsement,” she told reporters after the talks.
“Unfortunately a few emerging markets have decided that somehow they want to re-balance it in favor of one or another issue,” she said. “That was a very delicate balance that was struck. You pull one thread, it threatens to unravel.”
As if to prove her point, key African and Caribbean banana producers threatened on Sunday to torpedo any deal if the EU and Latin American states went ahead with a plan to cut EU banana import tariffs.
“We will block the [WTO] negotiations if our latest counter-proposal is not accepted,” said Cameroon Trade Minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, the spokesman for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) trade grouping.
His comment referred to the ACP’s bid to amend an agreement by the EU to lower banana import tariffs for certain Latin American states, which ACP countries fear will harm the competitiveness of their banana industries.
Ministers from more than 35 key trading nations were due to consult all 153 members of the WTO at a full meeting yesterday.
The WTO’s chief negotiators on agriculture and industrial goods — respectively ambassadors Crawford Falconer of New Zealand and Don Stephenson of Canada — were also set to issue new texts that would hopefully serve as the basis for any final agreement, delegates said.
New Zealand Trade Minister Phil Goff said on Sunday that there was “no great animosity,” but conceded that many differences remain.
Optimism had grown after a perceived breakthrough on Friday in deadlocked talks on farming and industrial products, followed by further encouraging signs from key players after discussions on the services sector.
But as negotiators began picking through the finer details on Sunday, a split opened up among emerging nations, underlining the vast differences in their interests.
India stuck to its hard line of protecting its small-scale farmers, claiming that it had rallied 100 countries to its cause, but other developing economies said they opposed India’s stance on the issue.
Commerce Minister Kamal Nath told reporters Sunday night’s meeting was “constructive,” but said there was still disagreement on the persistent sore points of agricultural import tariffs and sector-specific proposals for industrial goods.
Nath told reporters that “100 countries” had signed a paper backing India’s concerns on the so-called special safeguard mechanism (SSM) which would allow developing countries to raise farm tariffs if imports surge.
But an African diplomat said: “Who are these 100 countries? They [India] are thriving on a pack of lies.”
Other developing countries that oppose India’s stance include Latin American economies such as Paraguay and Uruguay, where much of their farm exports go to developing states.
“We are not ready to accept a solution that will impose a different balance of rights and obligations than the one we agreed upon in the Uruguay Round” of talks in 1994, said Uruguay’s ambassador to the WTO, Guillermo Valles Galmes.
Meanwhile, Asian export giant China annoyed other developing countries as it insisted on protecting its rice, cotton and sugar producers, another diplomat said.
“China is becoming a major problem. It is going back on a lot of its promises,” said the diplomat on condition of anonymity, adding that the Asian exporter said it would not lower its tariffs on these three products.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion