Eva Cheng
Led by the United States and the European Union, the rich nations' campaign to force open Third World countries' markets while protecting their own was frustrated again when the round of World Trade Organisation-sponsored negotiations initiated in 2001 at Doha, Qatar, were suspended on July 27.
In a report to the general council of the 149-member body, WTO director-general Pascal Lamy said that trade ministers of the so-called G6 — the US, the EU, Japan, Australia, Brazil and India — had held lengthy and detailed negotiations on July 23-24, but "the gaps remained too wide" to bother continuing.
Having initial agreement on key issues such as agricultural subsidies and industrial tariffs is crucial to the WTO being able to conclude the current round of negotiations by the end of this year. Months are required to translate a rough agreement into operable trade deals.
The Doha round of trade talks was originally planned to be completed by late 2004, then later rescheduled to be completed by the end of this year. Given the northern hemisphere summer holiday break, the Brazilian presidential election in October and the mid-term US congressional election in November, even merely resuming the negotiations before the end of the year is now highly doubtful.
However, Australian trade minister Mark Vaile told reporters on July 24 that the meeting later this year in Vietnam of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' meeting could be an important occasion to try to indirectly revive the trade negotiations.
The previous round of trade talks — the so-called Uruguay Round — started in 1986, but was only completed in late 1993. A new round of talks was to start at the WTO meeting in Seattle in late 1999, but failed to be launched after strong Third World opposition. It was finally launched at the WTO meeting in Doha in 2001.
During the Uruguay Round, through a combination of arm-twisting and false promises, the rich countries eventually succeeded in extending their pro-corporate economic agenda from physical products to the "intellectual property" and services.
Under the Doha Round, the rich nations want to make further inroads into "liberalising" the "trade in services", slash Third World countries' attempts through import tariffs to protect their domestic markets from domination by First World-based transnational corporations, and scale-back economic concessions granted to Third World countries by the rich Western powers under previous trade deals.
For most Third World governments, one dominant issue in this trade round is the need for the US and the EU to scale back their agricultural subsidies. These give agricultural export corporations of the US and the EU unfair advantages in international, including Third World, markets.
With the Doha Round billed as aiming to foster Third World economic development, the leaders of the underdeveloped countries have been misled to expect that the US and the EU would make substantial reductions in their agricultural subsidies and tariffs on farm product imports. However, both the US and the EU refused, with each blaming the other for the their refusal to move on this issue.
Global agricultural subsidies are estimated to total US$300 billion a year, with 21 rich countries — principally the US and the west European countries — accounting for $250 billion.
On July 1, at least nine groupings representing some 100 Third World countries issued a joint statement condemning the rich countries' hypocritical approach. They blamed the rich countries for failing to offer real concessions — on both agricultural and industrial products — while aggressively pressuring the underdeveloped countries to submit to the developed capitalist countries' pro-corporate demands.