With exactly one month to go before the Hong Kong WTO conference, analysts are struggling to predict the result of the gathering, despite a frenetic bout of talks.
After WTO heavyweights again failed to break the deadlock this week, trade ministers from the 148-member organization decided to curtail the conference's scope.
The Dec. 13 through Dec. 18 conference was initially billed as a final staging post in the Doha round of trade liberalization negotiations, which aim by the end of next year to yield a treaty cutting barriers to commerce.
But ministers this week acknowledged they would have to "recalibrate" their original target to approve the outlines of the accord, though they insist they are still committed to the round.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, head of the Evian Group, a Swiss-based think tank, said: "The bar has been lowered to just three millimeters off the ground.
"All we'll see in Hong Kong is an attempt to find the lowest common denominator in order to avoid a repeat of Cancun," Lehmann told reporters, referring to the WTO's failed 2003 conference in the Mexican seaside resort.
A key plank of the Doha round, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, is to use trade to boost developing countries.
Powerful developing countries such as Brazil and India argue that farm subsidies in rich nations -- the US and the EU in particular -- depress global farm prices and prevent growers in poor nations from competing fairly on world markets.
And they dismissed recent trade-opening offers from the EU and the US as inadequate.
Brazil and India, which steer the G20 developing country lobby, also want the farm subsidies controversy settled before parallel talks on trade in industrial products and services, such as banking, are stepped up.
WTO chief Pascal Lamy said this week that there were "audacious" proposals on the table but admitted: "The problem is that they are not sufficiently compatible."
On Friday, Peter Power, spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, said: "What we are aiming for is an agreement on the maximum degree of convergence on all areas of the talks."
Earlier this week, Mandelson said WTO members must do something in Hong Kong to benefit the world's poorest nations.
He called for "a clear, itemized development package to be agreed at Hong Kong as an early harvest, regardless of progress in the other areas."
Diplomats said Mandelson's suggestion received a cool reception from other WTO members, including Brazil and India.
Mandelson has said that those two countries don't represent the interests of all poor nations, but they claim he is attempting to divide the developing world by offering a partial package rather than waiting for a full deal.
"Nobody at this very late stage should try to reinvent the mandate. If people try to do that then their motivations are suspect," said India's trade ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia.
Lamy on Thursday urged member states to go beyond stocktaking in Hong Kong.
The specific aim in Hong Kong had been to build on a framework agreed in the summer of last year and to produce what are known in WTO jargon as "modalities" -- formulas and other guidelines for reducing trade barriers that are the bedrock of a treaty.
The interim deal last year included several agreements in principle, including one to eliminate export subsidies in farm trade.
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
GLOBAL ISSUE: If China annexes Taiwan, ‘it will not stop its expansion there, as it only becomes stronger and has more force to expand further,’ the president said China’s military and diplomatic expansion is not a sole issue for Taiwan, but one that risks world peace, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that Taiwan would stand with the alliance of democratic countries to preserve peace through deterrence. Lai made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). “China is strategically pushing forward to change the international order,” Lai said, adding that China established the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched the Belt and Road Initiative, and pushed for yuan internationalization, because it wants to replace the democratic rules-based international
WAR’S END ANNIVERSARY: ‘Taiwan does not believe in commemorating peace by holding guns,’ the president said on social media after attending a morning ceremony Countries should uphold peace, and promote freedom and democracy, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday as Taiwan marked 80 years since the end of World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lai, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and other top officials in the morning attended a ceremony at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) to honor those who sacrificed their lives in major battles. “Taiwanese are peace-loving. Taiwan does not believe in commemorating peace by holding guns,” Lai wrote on Facebook afterward, apparently to highlight the contrast with the military parade in Beijing marking the same anniversary. “We
RSS