BY SEAN HEALY
Despite their best efforts over the past 18 months, the world's most powerful governments have had little success strong-arming others into agreeing to a new, comprehensive round of World Trade Organisation talks, which they had hoped to launch at the global trade body's November conference in Qatar.
European Union trade negotiator Pascal Lamy, United States trade representative Robert Zoellick and WTO director-general Mike Moore have set themselves a July deadline for a decision on whether to attempt to launch a new round at Qatar — but Zoellick has already said that that deadline looks too soon.
The wheels of the "free trade" juggernaut might not be coming off just yet, but they're certainly loose and squeaky. The big corporations' nightmare scenario — of Qatar turning into a debacle like the previous ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999 — may yet come true, especially if peoples' movements mobilise worldwide opposition to them.
The World Trade Organisation, formed in 1995, was the product of an eight-year "round" of talks, the Uruguay Round, which forced open countries' markets to foreign investment and imports. The WTO was mandated to both enforce the commitments governments made during the Uruguay Round and to expand their scope, either through negotiations on designated topics (such as agriculture and services) or through launching new rounds which could take up entirely new issues.
The major trading powers, the "Quad" (the United States, the European Union, Japan and Canada), wanted the WTO's biannual ministerial meeting in Seattle, in November 1999, to launch such a new round, dubbed the "Millennium Round". This would have included extensive new issues, including new pro-business rules on investment, on government procurement and on competition policy, as well as further commitments on existing issues, including agriculture, services and intellectual property rights.
Quad negotiators spent four years bullying Third World countries, which make up the overwhelming bulk of the WTO's 140 members, into agreeing to the new round — even though it was clearly a smash-and-grab raid on behalf of Western transnational corporations.
But while they were able to force the issue, they weren't able to force the resolution they sought. Seattle ended in disarray, with no agreement on a new round: the Quad, the EU and the US in particular, couldn't agree with each other on what should and shouldn't be on the table; massive demonstrations by tens of thousands of protesters disrupted the talks; and negotiators from Third World governments, angry at Quad bullying, staged a revolt of their own.
Since then, Quad negotiators and the WTO's secretariat, led by Moore, have done everything they can to ensure that there's no repeat of what happened in Seattle, by systematically trying to neutralise the factors which caused the breakdown of talks there.
While WTO administrators deny it, and while Qatari authorities claim they will make their capital, Doha, an "island of peace" and will tolerate those "who want to come moderately to exchange views", the choice of venue for the next ministerial — a repressive Persian Gulf emirate — is clearly designed to neutralise protest groups. There will be no repeats of the mass demonstrations outside the conference venue that took place in Seattle.
The EU and the US have also been working overtime, especially since the new administration of President George W. Bush took over the White House in January, to smooth out past differences and ensure a united position on the new round.
The largest sign of this was the April 11 negotiated settlement to the eight-year long "banana war", the bitterest of all the EU-US trade disputes. Under the resolution, the US agreed to lift US$191 million worth of sanctions on EU luxury goods and the EU agreed to rescind its policy of giving preferences to small Caribbean banana growers over the giant US companies Chiquita and Dole.
Differences remain, however, especially over the tactical approach towards the new round. EU negotiators favour some level of concessions to Third World governments to get them on side. They are also far keener to get the round off the ground, as the EU needs gains on new issues, such as investment and competition, to offset what it will likely have to give away in the ongoing negotiations on agriculture, which the EU massively protected under its Common Agricultural Policy.
The US meanwhile is adopting a more hardline, no concessions stance, but also seems more intent on getting agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would extend the North American Free Trade Agreement from Mexico, Canada and the US to the rest of the Americas, than on gaining agreement on a new multilateral trade round.
But the Quad's biggest stumbling block is the Third World countries, which are flexing newfound negotiating muscle within the WTO and which at present are unwilling to agree to a new round, at least not without substantial concessions.
The Third World's main issue is what, in WTO-speak, has been dubbed "implementation issues": namely, the anti-South, pro-North bias of existing WTO agreements.
Southern governments are angry that, six years after the WTO's formation, they have gained few, if any, of the benefits promised them. While the South has stuck to its commitments to lower tariff barriers on Northern goods, the Northern governments have dragged their feet on their promises, have found ways to get around them or have reneged on them entirely. Northern markets for agricultural goods and textiles remain firmly closed to Southern exporters, for example.
Analyses of the Uruguay Round by the United Nations Development Program estimated that 70% of its economic benefits will go to the major industrialised powers, while the 48 least developed countries will be worse off by US$600 million.
Southern governments have been able to force discussions on implementation issues within the WTO, but Quad negotiators have brushed their concerns aside and have conceded nothing substantial to date.
Northern nations have also been quick to demand new concessions from the South in ongoing negotiations on agriculture and services, which moved from the review stage to the formal negotiation stage in March. These demands have added further to Southern opposition to a comprehensive new trade round.
The negotiating position of the "like-minded nations" group, which includes major Third World trading nations such as Brazil, Egypt and India, is to threaten to oppose a new comprehensive round outright unless they receive tangible concessions on implementation issues before the Qatar conference and unless issues of interest to them, such as anti-dumping policies and export subsidies, are part of the round. Many Southern governments are also dead-set against adding new issues like investment to the agenda.
The US for its part has said that it will not, under any circumstances, submit its export subsidy or anti-dumping policies, by means of which it massively aids both its exporting and import-competing companies, to negotiation.
Sooner or later, one side or the other will have to blink.