Inside US Trade | January 4, 2002
The new negotiations in the World Trade Organization must have as quick a start as possible and that requires the same active attention from trade ministers in informal meetings as did the November ministerial meeting that launched them, according to a senior U.S. trade official. In addition, there must be a role for the Mexican trade minister in his function as the chairman of the next WTO ministerial, he said.
WTO members chose Mexico as the host of the next ministerial in 2003 on Dec. 20, but did not fix the exact timing and place of this meeting.
There also has to be an effective use of the Trade Negotiations Committee, which is scheduled to meet for the first time on Jan. 28, he said. "You can't just hand it over to Geneva and expect to get it done," he said in a Dec. 20 press briefing.
In the Uruguay Round, the TNC was chaired by the Director General of the WTO, but his role would be somewhat curtailed by involving other officials in the process of guiding the negotiations. The TNC will supervise the overall negotiations and set a framework for them with negotiating groups and respective chairmen.
In a related development, Thailand Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi ended speculation that he might choose against taking the post of WTO Director General in favor of running for office by formally announcing he would accept the post. In a Dec. 20 letter to the WTO, Supachai said he would be ready to take on his duties on Sept. 1, 2002, the date set by the General Council, and would serve for three years.
U.S. business groups have been formulating their positions on detailed issues raised by the negotiations, such as the modalities to use for tariff negotiations or how to best handle the issues of investment and competition until the next ministerial. Separately, USTR is expected to issue a Federal Register Notice this month requesting detailed comments on the negotiations.
In addition, there must be a focus on capacity building of developing countries, including building up their staff resources, according to the U.S. official. That will allow them to engage in negotiations and in the implementation of concessions they have made, the official said.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick raised this issue with European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy during a December visit to Brussels as well as with the head of the Inter-American Development Bank, according to the official. IADB Bank head Enrique Iglesias believes the capacity-building efforts must be linked to the structural reforms that must take place in those countries, he said.
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also highlighted the need for capacity building to allow developing countries to actively participate in trade negotiations, according to a Dec. 26 fact sheet. But not all developing countries share the need for capacity building, according to MOFA. African countries, for example, seem to be keen on finding ways to build capacity in the areas of investment and competition, the fact sheet said. In contrast, Asian countries still seem to be focused on clarifying the need of establishing investment rules rather than capacity building, the fact sheet said.
Zoellick, Lamy and WTO Director General Mike Moore want to conclude the new WTO negotiations by Jan. 1, 2005, according to the U.S. official. He said there is "no technical reason" this cannot be done, but acknowledged that it will be a challenge in an organization with more than 140 members operated by consensus.
Concluding the WTO talks in the alloted timeframe would be a "nice mesh" with the scheduled conclusion of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), he said. This would be helpful in the area of agriculture and could be true in the antidumping negotiations as well, he said.
Latin American countries want to deal with farm subsidies in the FTAA but that issue cannot be addressed regionally unless there is a way to bring in the Europeans and the Japanese. This will require a connection to the WTO negotiations, he said.
The official said that the U.S. was able to get a "very good mandate" for agriculture, services and industrial market access market in the WTO, which is why there is strong support for the negotiations in the United States. With substantive negotiations launched in Qatar, U.S. business representatives and others in the United States perceived forward movement, which accounted for the success of fast-track legislation, the official said.
According to the Qatar ministerial declaration, modalities for the agriculture negotiations should be established no later than March 31, 2003, and draft schedules based on these modalities are to be submitted no later than the 2003 ministerial.
In the services negotiations, initial requests for specific commitments are due by June 30, 2002, and initial offers on March 31, 2003, according to the declaration. The declaration contains no such specific deadline for industrial market access (Inside U.S. Trade, Nov. 15, p. 1).
There are no timelines set forth in the declaration for rules negotiations, which will cover subsidies and antidumping rules. Instead, the declaration talks about an initial phase of negotiations to frame the issues and a subsequent phase for negotiating changes.
According to MOFA, the initial phase will aim to set the negotiating framework and to identify the issues that should be negotiated, such as the methodology for assessing injury determinations in trade cases.
The MOFA fact sheet also highlights the task of setting the framework and schedule for environmental negotiations, which will require "difficult negotiations" and a balancing act among WTO members.
The senior U.S. official highlighted the "very fine line" in the environmental mandate between the role of the WTO on the environment and the role of environmental organizations on trade.
This keeps the agriculture groups "from getting too anxious" but leaves room for creating an effective intersection between multilateral environmental agreements and the WTO, he said.Inside US Trade:
