Doha Development Issues and negotiations of WTO

Agreements under WTO:

The basic structure of the WTO agreements: how the six main areas fit together — the umbrella WTO Agreement, goods, services, intellectual property, disputes and trade policy reviews.
Umbrella	AGREEMENT ESTABLISHING WTO
	Goods	Services	Intellectual property
Basic principles	GATT	GATS	TRIPS
Additional details	Other goods agreements and annexes	Services annexes
Market access commitments	Countries’ schedules of commitments	Countries’ schedules of commitments(and MFN exemptions)
Dispute settlement	DISPUTE SETTLEMENT
Transparency	TRADE POLICY REVIEWS

Doha, 2001:

Two declarations

(1) the main declaration folded the on-going negotiations in agriculture and services into a broader agenda, which is commonly known as the Doha Development Round. In addition. the Doha agenda included the topic of industrial tariffs, topics of interest to developing countries, changes to WTO rules, and other provisions.

(2) dealt with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and allow government to be flexible of TRIPS to deal with health problems. It delayed the implementation of patent system provisions for pharmaceutical products for least developed countries (LDCs) until 2016. Declaration recognized certain “flexibilities” in the TRIPS agreement to allow each member to grant compulsory licenses for pharmaceuticals and to determine what constitutes a national emergency, expressly including public health emergencies such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis or other epidemics

2003 Cancun

Collapsed after four days during which the members could not agree on a framework to continue negotiations. Reasons were:

(1) differences over the Singapore issues . The EU had retreated on some of its demands, but several developing countries refused any consideration of these issues at all.

(2) it was questioned whether some countries had come to Cancún with a serious intention to negotiate

(3) the wide difference between developing and developed countries across virtually all topics was a major obstacle. The U.S.-EU agricultural proposal and that of the G20 developing nations, for example, show strikingly different approaches to special and differential treatment.

(4) there was some criticism of procedure.

Developed countries’ farm subsidies (both the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and the U.S. government agro-subsidies) became a major sticking point. The developing countries were seen as finally having the confidence to reject a deal that they viewed as unfavorable. This is reflected by the new trade bloc of developing and industrialized nations: the G20. Since its creation, the G20 has had fluctuating membership, but is spearheaded by the G4 (the People's Republic of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa)

Geneva 2004:

EU accepted the elimination of agricultural export subsidies “by date certain.” The Singapore issues were moved off the Doha agenda.WTO members reached what has become known as the Framework Agreement. Agreement contains a 4-page declaration, with four annexes (A-D) covering agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, and trade facilitation, respectively.n addition, the agreement acknowledges the activities of other negotiating groups (such as those on rules, dispute settlement, and intellectual property) and exhorts them to fulfill their Doha round negotiating objectives

Paris, 2005]

Paris talks were hanging over a few issues: France protested moves to cut subsidies to farmers, while the U.S., Australia, the EU, Brazil and India failed to agree on issues relating to chicken, beef and rice.^[16] Most of the sticking points were small technical issues, making trade negotiators fear that agreement on large politically risky issues will be substantially harder.

Hong Kong, 2005:MC6

The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference took place in Hong Kong, 13 to 18 December 2005. A

Trade ministers representing most of the world's governments reached a deal that sets a deadline for eliminating subsidies of agricultural exports by 2013. The final declaration from the talks, which resolved several issues that have stood in the way of a global trade agreement, also requires industrialized countries to open their markets to goods from the world's poorest nations, a goal of the United Nations for many years.

Geneva, 2006

The July 2006 talks in Geneva failed to reach an agreement about reducing farming subsidies and lowering import taxes, and negotiations took months to resume. A successful outcome of the Doha round became increasingly unlikely, because the broad trade authority granted under the Trade Act of 2002 to U.S. president George W. Bush was due to expire in 2007. Any trade pact would then have to be approved by the U.S. Congress with the possibility of amendments, which would hinder the U.S. negotiators and decrease the willingness of other countries to participate.^[2] Hong Kong offered to mediate the collapsed trade liberalisation talks. Director-general of Trade and Industry, Raymond Young, says the territory, which hosted the last round of Doha negotiations, has a "moral high-ground" on free trade that allows it to play the role of "honest broker".^{[citation needed]}

Geneva, 2008

On 21 July 2008, negotiations started again at the WTO's HQ in Geneva on the Doha round but stalled after nine days of negotiations over the refusal to compromise over the special safeguard mechanism. "Developing country Members receive special and differential treatment with respect to other Members' safeguard measures, in the form of a de minimis import volume exemption. As users of safeguards, developing country Members receive special and differential treatment with respect to applying their own such measures, with regard to permitted duration of extensions, and with respect to re-application of measures.

Kamal Nath, India's Commerce Minister, was absent from the first few days of the conference due to a vote of confidence being conducted in India's Parliament. On the second day of the conference, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced that the U.S. would cap its farm subsidies at $15 billion a year, from $18.2 billion in 2006. The proposal was on the condition that countries such as Brazil and India drop their objections to various aspects of the round.The U.S. and the EU also offered an increase in the number of temporary work visas for professional workers. After one week of negotiations, many considered agreement to be 'within reach'. However, there were disagreements on issues including special protection for Chinese and Indian farmers and African and Caribbean banana imports to the EU. India and China's hard stance regarding tariffs and subsidies was severely criticized by the United States. In response, India's Commerce Minister said "I'm not risking the livelihood of millions of farmers."

Collapse of negotiations

The negotiations collapsed over issues of agricultural trade between the United States, India, and China.^[28] In particular, there was insoluble disagreement between India and the United States over the special safeguard mechanism (SSM), a measure designed to protect poor farmers by allowing countries to impose a special tariff on certain agricultural goods in the event of an import surge or price fall.

United States arguing that the threshold had been set too low.

Several countries blamed each other for the breakdown of the negotiations.^[31] The United States and some European Union members blamed India for the failure of the talks.^[32] India claimed that its position (i.e. that the U.S. was sacrificing the world's poor for U.S./European commercial interests) was supported by over 100 countries.^[33] Brazil, one of the founding members of the G-20, broke away from the position held by India.^[34] Then-European Commissioner for Trade Peter Mandelson said that India and China should not be blamed for the failure of the Doha round.^[35] In his view, the agriculture talks had been harmed by the five-year program of agricultural subsidies recently passed by the U.S. Congress, which he said was "one of the most reactionary farm bills in the history of the U.S.".^[28]

[edit]Current progress

A mini-ministerial meeting held in India on September 3 and 4 pledged to complete the round by the end of 2010.^[38] The declaration at the end of the G20 summit of world leaders in London in 2009 included a pledge to complete the Doha round. Although a WTO ministerial conference scheduled in November 2009 would not be a negotiating session,^[39] there would be several opportunities over the year 2009 to discuss the progress.

In early 2010, Brazil and Lamy have focused on the role of the United States in overcoming the deadlock. Lula has urged Barack Obama to end the trade dispute between Brazil and the US over cotton subsidies following his increase in tariffs on over 100 US goods.^[41] Lamy has highlighted the difficulty of obtaining agreement from the US without the Presidential fast track authority and biennial elections.

Issues

Agriculture

The first proposal in Qatar, in 2001, called for the end agreement to commit to substantial improvements in market access; reductions (and ultimate elimination) of all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade-distorting support

The United States is being asked by the European Union (EU) and the developing countries, led by Brazil and India, to make a more generous offer for reducing trade-distorting domestic support for agriculture. The United States is insisting that the EU and the developing countries agree to make more substantial reductions in tariffs and to limit the number of import-sensitive and special products that would be exempt from cuts.

Import-sensitive products are of most concern to developed countries like the European Union, while developing countries are concerned with special products — those exempt from both tariff cuts and subsidy reductions because of development, food security, or livelihood considerations. (Additional information on the framework of the DOHA Development Round. [3]) India has insisted on a large number of special products that would not be exposed to wider market opening

[edit]Access to patented medicines

Before the Doha meeting, the United States claimed that the current language in TRIPS was flexible enough to address health emergencies, but other countries insisted on new language.^[1]

On 30 August 2003, WTO members reached agreement on the TRIPS and medicines issue. Voting in the General Council, member governments approved a decision that offered an interim waiver under the TRIPS Agreement allowing a member country to export pharmaceutical products made under compulsory licenses to least-developed and certain other members

[edit]Special and differential treatment

In the Doha Ministerial Declaration, the trade ministers reaffirmed special and differential (S&D) treatment for developing countries and agreed that all S&D treatment provisions “...be reviewed with a view to strengthening them and making them more precise, effective and operational.

The negotiations have been split along a developing-country/developed-country divide. Developing countries wanted to negotiate on changes to S&D provisions, keep proposals together in the Committee on Trade and Development, and set shorter deadlines. Developed countries wanted to study S&D provisions, send some proposals to negotiating groups, and leave deadlines open.

At the December 2005 Hong Kong ministerial, members agreed to five S&D provisions for LDCs, including the duty-free and quota-free access

Duty-free and quota-free access (DFQFA) currently discussed covers 97% of tariff lines and if the USA alone were to implement the initiative, it would potentially increase Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs) exports by 10% (or $1bn).^[47] Many major trading powers already provide preferential access to LDCs through initiatives such as the Everything but Arms (EBA) initiative and the African Growth and Opportunities Act. However, due to LDCs narrow export-base, 100% of tariff lines must be covered for real impact.

[edit]Implementation issues

Developing countries claim that they have had problems with the implementation of the agreements reached in the earlier Uruguay Round because of limited capacity or lack of technical assistance. They also claim that they have not realized certain benefits that they expected from the Round, such as increased access for their textiles and apparel in developed-country markets. They seek a clarification of language relating to their interests in existing agreements.

Before the Doha ministerial, WTO Members resolved a small number of these implementation issues. At the Doha meeting, the Ministerial Declaration directed a two-path approach for the large number of remaining issues: (a) where a specific negotiating mandate is provided, the relevant implementation issues will be addressed under that mandate; and (b) the other outstanding implementation issues will be addressed as a matter of priority by the relevant WTO bodies. Outstanding implementation issues are found in the area of market access, investment measures, safeguards, rules of origin, and subsidies and countervailing measures, among others.

[edit]Benefits

All countries participating in the negotiations believe that there is some economic benefit in adopting the agreement; however, there is considerable disagreement of how much benefit the agreement would actually produce. A study by the University of Michigan found that if all trade barriers in agriculture, services, and manufactures were reduced by 33% as a result of the Doha Development Agenda, there would be an increase in global welfare of $574.0 billion.^[48] A 2008 study by World Bank Lead Economist Kym Anderson^[49] found that global income could increase by more than $3000 billion per year, $2500 billion of which would go to the developing world.^[50] Others had been predicting more modest outcomes, e.g. world net welfare gains ranging from $84 billion to $287 billion by the year 2015.^[1][51] Pascal Lamy has conservatively estimated that the deal will bring an increase of $130 billion.^[52]

Several think tanks and public organizations assess that the conclusion of the trade round will result in a net gain . However, the restructuring and adjustment costs required to prevent the collapse of local industries, particularly in developing countries, is a global concern. For example, a late 2009 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the United Nations Development Programme and the Kenyan Institute for Research and Policy Analysis found that Kenya would see gains in its exports of flowers, tea, coffee and oil seeds. It would concurrently lose in the tobacco and grains markets, as well as manufacturing of textiles and footwear, machinery and equipment.

The Copenhagen Consensus, which evaluates solutions for global problems regarding the cost-benefit ratio, in 2008 ranked the DDA as the second-best investment for global welfare, after the provision of vitamin supplements to the world's 140 million malnourished children.

Geneva 2011 Developments:

The latest round of agriculture negotiations was held in Geneva 7 – 17 February 2011, following meetings in December and January.

Agriculture

In the latest round of negotiations there was a growing sense among Members of the need to make progress on outstanding issues, and as a result of this there was more substantive engagement on key issues. The next round of agriculture negotiations will be held in Geneva in early March.

NAMA

The NAMA negotiating group met in January and February to advance discussions on both non-tariff barriers (NTBs) and sectoral tariff liberalisation. The Chair convened smaller groups to advance discussions on cross-cutting NTB proposals, such as proposals concerning transparency and consultation mechanisms for addressing trade problems. Sectoral tariff liberalisation proponents continue to meet with potential participants bilaterally. In particular, there has been further discussion on potential flexibilities that might be required for key developing countries to join sectoral tariff elimination initiatives. Further progress in this area will be important in determining the prospects of concluding the Round this year.

Trade Facilitation

Work is intensifying on trade facilitation, with the recent Negotiating Group meeting on 14-18 February continuing the review of draft consolidated text. This meeting followed intensive small-group open-ended meetings held in Geneva which sought to streamline text on individual proposals. Australia is a co-sponsor and facilitator of the Advance Rulings proposal and has taken a lead role in narrowing differences on this issue.

Services

As part of the broader effort to seek to conclude the Doha Round, WTO Members reconvened in Geneva in January and February to intensify negotiations on services. Australia has worked closely with the US, EU, Japan and Canada to identify what is needed from other Members to achieve a satisfactory package on services and brought together a group of 30 key members (S30) in February to discuss this. The meeting focused on where Members anticipated the need for flexibility in regard to elements identified as important to a final package. Members have expressed a willingness to participate in the detailed negotiations on services market access that are necessary to conclude the round.

Trade and Environment

Consultations on trade and environment were held most recently on 14-18 February in Geneva. Some progress has been made, although there are key outstanding issues still to be resolved. Members are exploring text on the relationship between the WTO and multilateral environmental agreements (MEA), and possible approaches that might be adopted to liberalise environmental goods and services.