BY SEAN HEALY
If you've seen the movie, you'll know that, once it had hit the iceberg, the Titanic took a long time to sink. That might be just what we're seeing happen to the World Trade Organisation.
Almost two full years after its plans to launch a new round of comprehensive talks on trade liberalisation were scuttled in Seattle by a combination of massive protests outside and a delegate revolt inside, the WTO is still taking on water.
Its officials, the trade representatives of its dominant members, the United States and Europe in particular, the big business lobbyists who perpetually buzz around it have spent that whole time since November 1999 seeking to convince or cajole the WTO's 142 member-states into backing a new round.
But its chances of using its next ministerial meeting, scheduled for the Persian Gulf state of Qatar in early November, to do what it failed to do in Seattle are looking bleaker by the day.
And panic is now starting to set in. If it fails to launch a new round of trade talks in Qatar, the organisation which rules the global trading system faces "a long period of irrelevance", its ever more harried-looking director-general, Mike Moore, has stated.
The point of conflict is fundamental. The so-called "Quad" of the US, Europe, Japan and Canada — the largest trading nations which have traditionally set the agenda in the WTO — want a new round to extend liberalisation commitments in existing agreements and to move on to new issues, such as new global rules on investment which would make it easier for big corporations to operate in countries on their preferred terms.
But many Third World nations believe that the previous, Uruguay, round of trade negotiations, which formed the WTO in 1995, was stacked against them, that they have suffered all the problems and the rich, industrialised countries have gathered all the benefits.
They therefore want the existing agreements (in WTO-speak, "implementation issues") fixed and renegotiated before a new round adds new issues and new burdens.
Some, especially those in the Cairns Group of agriculture-exporting countries — which includes nations like Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Australia — support a new round, but want the US and Europe to commit beforehand to sweeping changes to their agricultural subsidisation policies.
Subsidies
The developed capitalist countries spend more than US$1 billion a day on agricultural subsidies, principally to big business, giving them an enormous competitive advantage over other countries' agricultural sectors, and have shown little interest in abandoning the practice.
Others, the so-called Like-Minded Countries Group led by India and Pakistan, are opposed to a new round altogether, on the grounds that the major trading powers have done nothing substantive to address "implementation issues" since Seattle and that the new issues, such as investment, will only further hurt poor countries.
While not being so forthright, this is also the position of the 49 least developed countries, which issued a statement after their July meeting in Tanzania that "the time is not ripe" for a new round.
In an attempt to speed the process, Moore originally set a deadline of July for a "reality check", at which time the WTO's leading powers could determine whether or not they should push ahead with attempts to launch a new round.
But the WTO's general council, meeting on July 29-30, showed no signs of even approaching consensus on an agenda for the Qatar meeting.
Then Mexico offered to host an informal summit of 18 of the most crucial countries — including the Quad, India, South Africa, Tanzania, South Africa and Australia — to hammer out differences.
Statements from Moore, US trade representative Robert Zoellick and European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy were all upbeat about the August 31-September 1 meeting, with Moore claiming that it had "edged forward" and that a new round was now more likely than not.
But representatives of India, the leading governmental opponent of a new round, gave quite a different account of the meeting. Indian trade minister Murasoli Maran said that a list of 93 items of concern to his country has been "on the table for the last three years", but that at the meeting, "There was some kind of opposition to all of our views... I don't think there was convergence ... no convergence took place".
Within days of the Mexican meeting breaking up without agreement, the first divisions had started to show within the Quad itself.
One-year delay
At a European Union meeting in Brussels, Belgium, French trade minister Francois Huvart stunned his colleagues by calling for a one-year delay in attempts to launch a new round and for Europe to abandon an "all-or-nothing" approach to the talks.
Third World countries were likely to reject calls for a new round, he said, and therefore Europe needed a back-up strategy.
"As the largest recipient of funds for the EU Common Agriculture Policy, France is worried that it has the most to lose in Qatar", commented a European Union official. France's farmers, both large and small, have been vocal in rejecting any reduction in subsidies.
"When you combine that with the fact that French elections will take place next year and the French Socialist-Green Party coalition government wants to avoid being seen as a proponent of globalisation, you can understand why the French are suddenly trying to raise doubts about Qatar", the official added.
Despite the warning, Europe and the US remain committed to using every available opportunity between now and November to press WTO member-nations into backing a new round.
Multilateral trade liberalisation will be a prominent feature at the summits of the Organisation of African Unity, scheduled for the end of September in Nigeria, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Brisbane on October 5-7 and the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, scheduled for China in late October.
Failure in Qatar won't necessarily be fatal for the WTO. Negotiations on the agreement on agriculture and the General Agreement on Trade in Services, part of the "built-in" agenda agreed to in 1995, will continue regardless of the outcome, as will the workings of the organisation's Disputes Resolution Panel, which has enormous powers to force changes in countries' laws and practices.
Failure will, however, be a major blow to the WTO's legitimacy. Already, the United States is re-assessing its options for pursuing trade liberalisation and seems to have put greater priority on bilateral and plurilateral agreements, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas which is currently under negotiation. In a July speech, British chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown even mooted a US-Europe free trade zone.
Such moves will clearly undermine the WTO's status as global "free trade" enforcer.
Meanwhile, social movements are gearing up to ensure that that is just the outcome of Qatar.
Around the world, coalitions of protest groups have called for an international day of action against corporate-led globalisation on November 9, the first day of the Qatar summit. In Sydney, opposition to a new trade round will be a major focus of a November 13 march and rally by the International Metalworkers Federation, which is meeting in the city.
Some kind of action will even occur in Qatar itself, a country initially chosen at least in part because of its intolerant attitude to public protest. Groups from at least half a dozen different countries have already met to plan a flotilla of protest boats to visit the country during the WTO's summit.