Houston Chronicle | By Jenalia Moreno | Sept. 9, 2003
Protesters and free-traders will converge in the resort city of Cancun, Mexico, Wednesday through Sunday, but it seems unlikely they'll come away with much more than a sunburn, international trade experts believe.
The World Trade Organization's 146 ministers hope to resolve disputes over everything from tariffs and farm subsidies to liberalized rules for overseas investment.
But most analysts expect little to be accomplished beyond what was done during the WTO's meeting in Doha, Qatar, two years ago.
Indeed, U.S. trade negotiators are toning down expectations for key breakthroughs at this meeting, said Robert Scott, international economist for the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. "I think they're engaged now in a process of face-saving," Scott said.
Developed and developing countries are too far apart on some key issues to reach agreements this week, and U.S. officials don't want the meeting to be viewed as a failure, observers said.
However, trade ministers will likely return to their home countries next week and paint a rosy picture of their meeting on the playa.
"There are a lot of areas where countries are seeking to yield as little as possible and bring home as much as possible," said Dan Ikenson, trade policy analyst with the Washington-based Cato Institute. "A lot of these will be papered over so delegations can come home and put a smiley face on this whole process."
The Doha round proved more successful -- and was more remote -- than the WTO's previous trade meeting in Seattle, which was overshadowed by riots.
With this meeting in Mexico, protesters promise to disturb the otherwise tranquil Cancun venue. A wide range of interest groups, from the Teamsters to Friends of the Earth, have traveled to Cancun in the past few days to publicize their disputes with the WTO and the United States.
Mexican security officials will try to keep demonstrators away so attendees can negotiate, but even if they manage to keep protesters out of sight, trade talks will be challenging.
The meeting comes as global trade has dipped because of the Sept. 11 attacks and economic crises have whipped one region after another since 1997. And the Mexican venue highlights the stalling of promised developments in economic equality because of U.S. economic problems and the flight of manufacturing to cheaper Asian nations.
The goal in Doha was to reach agreements by January 2005, but it seems unlikely that the Cancun meeting will result in much progress on issues such as agriculture and liberalization of energy sectors in developing countries.
The most important issue to be discussed during the meeting will be agriculture, which is expected to draw representatives from the Texas Farm Bureau and Mexican growers to monitor talks.
Poor countries want the United States and European Union to cut back on subsidies so they can compete, while the developed nations want the developing world to lift trade barriers on agricultural products. Poor countries will likely continue their criticism of the U.S. farm bill approved last year.
Leading up to the meeting, several groups published studies citing harm caused by rich countries that subsidize their farmers. Poor countries lose $ 24 billion annually because of subsidies and protectionism by rich countries, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute's study released last month.
One agriculture-related issue that's important to watch, said Ben Lilliston, spokesman for the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, is the Peace Clause, set to expire at year-end. The clause prohibits importing countries from protecting their market from exporting countries that are subsidizing products and dumping them, which is selling products below fair market prices. Exporters must simply meet WTO rules on subsidies to be protected.
If WTO members let the Peace Clause expire, Lilliston predicts several countries will file complaints against the United States and European Union.
Attendees will also discuss the 2005 deadline for import quotas on textiles and how textile-producing nations will handle the change. Tariffs, too, will be a hot topic, and steel-exporting countries are expected to be critical of the United States for the hefty duties levied on imported steel last year.
But besides complaining about these key issues, attendees likely won't get much done in the way of freeing up trade rules.
"They'll sit in meetings and talk over meaningless documents and drink a lot of good wine in the evenings," the Economic Policy Institute's Scott said.Houston Chronicle:
