WTO fails to meet April deadline

Crawford Falconer

World Trade Organisation members will miss a second self-imposed deadline to sew up a global trade pact after more than four years of negotiations.

After failing to conclude the round of trade talks launched in Doha in 2001 by the target date of the end of last year, they set an April 30 deadline to agree on the key numbers for cutting agricultural and industrial tariffs and reducing domestic farm subsidies.

But the big three players - the United States, Europe and the Group of 20 developing countries led by Brazil and India - are still deadlocked and the planned ministerial meeting at the end of the month in Geneva has been cancelled.

"I'm concerned the deadline is missed and there is a further delay which could put the round in jeopardy," said Trade Minister Phil Goff. "But we are not yet at the stage where you could say it's a lost cause. It is still possible and, on balance, it is still likely."

He said the real deadline was the middle of the year. That reflected the time it would take to translate the essential political deal into detailed numbers for thousands of products and get the final agreement through the US Senate before the Bush Administration's "fast track" negotiating mandate expired next year.

"The key parties have to decide to make the concessions necessary for the round to be completed with at least a reasonable amount of ambition," Goff said. "If, approaching that mid-year deadline, they aren't able to achieve that, the matter will be passed to the director-general of the WTO to write the text.

"At that point, the parties will have a text they can accept or reject and they have to make the hard decision: Do they want an outcome to the round or not. Any party that stands in the way of that is going to bear some opprobrium for not being prepared to make the concessions necessary for the benefit of everybody."

Reuters reports from Geneva that Crawford Falconer, New Zealand's WTO ambassador who chairs its agriculture negotiations, said member states should concentrate less on deadlines and more on getting the job done.

"I see no point in declaring another deadline. Deadlines have no credibility," he said.

Some advance had been made in talks last week in the areas of export subsidies, food aid and the least trade-distorting forms of domestic subsidies.

Falconer said he planned to hold six weeks of intensive negotiations from the start of next month.

His predecessor, Tim Groser, now a National MP, said he agreed 100 per cent about the need to get on with it and not worry about "wholly artificial, self-imposed" deadlines.

Groser, who like Goff has just returned from a US-New Zealand partnership forum in Washington, said he did not regard the replacement of US Trade Representative Rob Portman with his deputy, Susan Schwab, as a downgrading of the Doha Round by the Bush Administration.

Portman has been appointed budget director.

Replacing its leading trade official at this stage of the round has been widely seen as a signal that the US Administration does not regard a deal as within reach.

Groser said that, other things being equal, now was not the time to change lead negotiators, but other things were not equal.

"I've absolutely no reason to doubt the reasons given [for moving Portman to the budget post]. Because of the US's enormous and growing budget deficit, it makes sense to give that task to someone of Rob Portman's enormous political talents and standing on Capitol Hill and to give that a higher priority."

Goff agrees. "It's about wanting his skills in that area rather than any slight to the round. It will be a month or two before Portman and Schwab are confirmed in their new jobs and he told me that he would be fully engaged in the process up to that point. And the issues are the same regardless of the people."

On the prospects of a bilateral free trade agreement with the US, Goff said neither Portman nor Schwab was negative or ruled it out but had indicated it would be problematic.

There is a limited window of opportunity before the fast track expires and the US Trade Representative's office has limited resources and has already embarked on FTA negotiations with Korea and Malaysia, which are respectively the United States' seventh and 10th largest trading partners, while New Zealand ranks 43rd.

"I think it's a matter of when, not if," Goff said.

Opposition leader Don Brash, who also attended the forum, said it was fairly clear some members of the US Administration felt there was no prospect of an FTA without some change in New Zealand's anti-nuclear position.


HURDLES AHEAD

What would it take to get a world trade deal?

* Europe offering more access to agriculture.

* The US cutting domestic subsidies to farmers.

* Developing countries lowering tariffs on industrial goods.