Trade Talks Now Expected to Focus on Exports of Poorest Nations
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: December 12, 2005
HONG KONG, Dec. 11 - Recognizing that little progress can be expected on intractable issues like farm subsidies, officials at global trade talks scheduled to begin here on Tuesday now appear likely to focus heavily on increasing exports from the world's poorest countries.
Bobby Yip/Associated Press
Demonstrators in Hong Kong Sunday, anticipating the start of World Trade Organization talks with a theater of the streets.
Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, and John Tsang, Hong Kong's trade minister and chairman of the W.T.O. ministerial conference here, have called with increasing emphasis in the last few days for a detailed agreement eliminating all duties and quotas on the exports of at least 32 of the world's poor countries.
The move to focus on trade by the poor is drawing support from the European Union and Japan, as well as from some of the more economically viable developing nations. It comes as efforts for a deal on agricultural subsidies have stumbled.
But this emphasis on poor countries poses potential difficulties for the Bush administration, which has raised concerns while accepting that some kind of agreement is needed on trade relations with the poorest among third world economies.
The administration faces pressure from Southern states like North Carolina on cotton, particularly garments. While the United States allows duty-free, quota-free imports of garments from many poor countries in Latin America and Africa, industry groups in textile-producing states and their political allies in Congress oppose the elimination of duties on garments from Bangladesh, a poor nation that is one of the world's largest exporters of clothing.
Industry groups and some Southern politicians also oppose deep cuts in cotton subsidies that help American farmers compete with producers in the poorest sub-Saharan countries, like Mali and Chad, though some limited cuts have been made.
The United States did support an initial agreement this past Tuesday to allow poor nations greater access to generic drugs in health crises.
But American officials have been calling for a stronger focus here on the W.T.O.'s longer-term goal of removing barriers to global farm trade, and not just discussions on trade with poor countries.
The agriculture negotiations have stalled, largely because of a reluctance by the European Union to accept steep cuts in domestic subsidies.
Trade officials met in Geneva in November, but failed to broker a deal on subsidies ahead of the Hong Kong meeting. Those talks ended with a warning that failing to move ahead on agriculture risked jeopardizing the progress made in other trade discussions since July 2004.
The White House trade representative, Rob Portman, said on Friday that "Hong Kong will not be a time for us to make some major breakthroughs that the United States had hoped for, but we do hope that we can make incremental progress and establish building blocks that would go toward even more progress early in the new year."
He added that the United States was moving to address West African concerns about cotton subsidies, and that the United States expected some form of duty-free, quota-free access to be agreed upon for many goods from the poorest countries.
The European Union began allowing duty-free, quota-free imports in 2001 for most goods from these nations, and is now offering to eliminate its remaining barriers by 2009 on the imports of bananas, sugar and rice. Japan is also offering a broad elimination of quotas and duties on imports from these countries, although it is seeking exemptions for rice and shoe imports.
Depending on what definition or threshold is used for the world's poorest countries, 32 to 49 such countries could benefit. The Group of 7 leading industrial nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are all preparing plans to provide extra aid to help these countries' more vulnerable industries adjust to international competition.
Mr. Tsang and Mr. Lamy have each said that further progress is needed this week on broader issues like liberalizing global farm trade, lowering tariffs on industrial goods and increasing international competition in service industries like banking, insurance and transportation. But they are also calling for early understandings among ministers on trade issues involving the poor countries, and for turning these understandings into an actual agreement.
"I have placed development issues at the top of the agenda right from the outset," Mr. Tsang said Sunday afternoon, "and I would like to see an early harvest of the key development issues" at the meetings this week, "or at least see that we have made substantial progress in resolving them."
Objections from West African nations over the American cotton subsidies, together with others from Botswana over talks on streamlining customs procedures, brought negotiations to a standstill at the most recent W.T.O. ministerial conference two years ago in Cancún, Mexico.
But some nations in Africa and the Caribbean have objected to a global dismantling of limits on exports from poor countries. These nations, many of them former colonies with special relationships to their old capitals, already enjoy duty-free access to European or American markets and do not want to see rivals like Bangladesh become more competitive by winning duty-free treatment.
Economic development issues have been central to the current round of global trade talks since they began at a ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. Further complicating any agreement is the W.T.O.'s ever-growing membership; Saudi Arabia became the organization's 149th member on Sunday.
A march here against the W.T.O. and corporate influence here on Sunday by several thousand protesters included representatives from a wide range of activist groups, many with conflicting aims - illustrating the difficulty of reaching a deal on economic development issues.
A large contingent from Thailand, Indonesia, India, the Philippines and other developing nations carried purple banners calling for better pay for migrant workers. But Kat Chan, 45, a Hong Kong office cleaner, also marched to call for a ban on migrant workers. "Cleaning workers from other countries will come and we'll lose our jobs," she said, "or we'll have to work very long hours at very low wages."
Despite warm, sunny skies, the march drew barely half the 7,000 people expected. Organizers put the crowd at 4,000 while the police estimated it at 3,200. No violence was reported, and a police spokeswoman said no arrests had been made.
Some of the demonstrators came from the poor countries at the center of discussions here. Yasmin Mita, a rural activist from Bangladesh, wore a sari and held a protest banner as part of a contingent from the Coalition of Agricultural Workers International. Ms. Mita said through a translator that she opposed a W.T.O. agreement because she thought it would lead to larger-scale agriculture with more intensive pesticide use. "It is going to affect agriculture and also women," she said.
When a single Greenpeace protester chained himself in 1993 to the secretariat gates of the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the protester surprised trade officials who had seldom attracted attention from activists before.
Sunday's march showed how much has changed. The W.T.O. has tried to take this into account, particularly since Mr. Lamy, a Frenchman who until recently was the European Union's top trade official, became director general on Sept. 1.
For the first time, the W.T.O. is allowing delegates from advocacy groups to enter the conference itself, and 2,000 such delegates have been issued security passes - although the trade ministers will still be allowed to gather secretly in groups when they wish to do so.