Ministers and officials from 19 farm exporting countries plus the US and India met in Indonesia yesterday to give impetus to world trade talks amid the global economic slump.
The Cairns Group meeting, which includes Australia, Brazil and Canada, is expected to call for a fresh start to the Doha Round of world trade talks and condemn rising signs of protectionism.
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy are also attending the three-day meeting, which is taking place in the luxury beach resort of Nusa Dua on Bali island.
Kirk is scheduled to hold his first bilateral talks with India’s new trade minister, Anand Sharma, today, after disagreements between the two countries over protective tariffs scuppered WTO negotiations in July.
Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean, who will chair the Cairns Group meeting, said the talks were an opportunity to send the new US administration a strong message about the need for open markets.
The Cairns Group has bitterly condemned a new trade war between the US and the EU after Washington reintroduced export subsidies for its dairy industry last month in response to similar moves by Brussels.
“This meeting will send a strong political message on the need to fight protectionism and conclude WTO negotiations,” Crean said in a statement ahead of the talks.
“Now is the time for political engagement if we are going to drive the Doha Round to a successful conclusion. Only concluding the Doha Round can eradicate market-distorting subsidies such as dairy export subsidies that have re-emerged this year,” he said.
Washington said last month it would bring back export incentives for its dairy industry after its international market share was hit by the EU’s move to reintroduce such subsidies.
The moves undermine WTO commitments to eliminate all export subsidies by 2013.
The Cairns Group, which accounts for more than 25 percent of world agricultural exports, advocates deep cuts to all tariffs and the total elimination of export subsidies, saying they threaten economic recovery. The Doha Round of WTO talks, which started at the end of 2001 in the Qatari capital, aims to boost international commerce by removing trade barriers and subsidies.
But a deal has proved elusive so far as countries are reluctant to open up their markets or reduce financial support to farmers.
Disagreements — primarily between India and the US over tariffs — collapsed the last series of negotiations between WTO ministers, plunging the fate of the broader Doha Round into uncertainty.
Representatives from Japan, China and the EU will also attend the Bali meeting.
The Cairns Group is comprised of Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS