TRADE

Sugar Groups See Doha Moving Forward, With Difficulties

Wed. Aug 6, 2008


KAMUELA, Hawaii -- The Doha round will still move forward despite the failure of the trade ministerial in Geneva last week, according to trade lobbyists attending the American Sugar Alliance symposium this week. "Unfortunately, this is not the end," said Simon Harris, a trade adviser for British Sugar, reflecting the sentiments of many U.S. cane and beet growers who view the round as a threat. Harris said the many agreements reached at the technical level in the Doha round would propel trade officials from the World Trade Organization member countries to continue talks until those agreements are captured in permanent regulations, even though progress would be slow. "Too much political capital has been invested" to stop now, Harris added. "We must not underestimate the degree of technical convergence there has been." American Sugar Alliance lobbyist Don Phillips agreed, noting that the round had been declared dead after a gathering in Potsdam, Germany, in 2007, but that ministers had continued meeting. "It's hard to say 'Let's call the whole thing off,' " Phillips said.

Harris said the list of agreed-on technical items should become known when WTO Director General Pascal Lamy issues a paper on the Geneva mini-ministerial in a few weeks. Trade Representative Schwab said at the end of the meeting that the U.S. offer to reduce the limit on its trade-distorting farm subsidies to $14.5 billion per year remains on the table, but that stance did not go over well with some key lawmakers, including Senate Agriculture ranking member Saxby Chambliss, who said it should be withdrawn. More broadly, the U.S. and European offers on agriculture drew criticism from some developing countries and representatives of nongovernmental groups for not going far enough. Phillips noted that the United States did not face as much pressure as expected, because the dominant debate in Geneva focused on the insistence of China and India to use a special safeguard mechanism to protect their agriculture from increased imports.

Most lobbyists would not predict when another trade ministerial meeting would take place or whether the negotiations would continue with the same dynamics since the round was launched in 2001. Ken Roberts, a former U.S. trade negotiator who lobbies for Kraft and favors market liberalization, noted that agriculture is not the only issue in the talks. As an example, he cited India's problems with manufactured goods negotiations and its broader opposition to measures that would make China more competitive. Harry Kopp, the Washington lobbyist for the Philippine sugar industry, said the high commodity prices and export controls that some countries have recently imposed had made many developing countries less concerned about the round's original goal -- reducing trade barriers so they can export farm products to developed countries -- and more concerned about the supply of food for their own food security.

Lobbyists also pointed to other factors that would shape Doha's progress. Alf Cristaudo, chairman of the Australian Cane Growers and president of the World Association of Beet and Cane Growers, said he considers the upcoming Indian elections to be more important to the future of the round than the U.S. elections. Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, a member of the Congress Party, stuck to his position that he would reject any agreement that would have India increase its agricultural imports at the expense of its subsistence farmers.

by Jerry Hagstrom

  •  
  •