New York Times | By Elizabeth Becker | Sept. 10, 2003
CANCUN, Mexico, Sept. 9 - The top-level trade talks beginning here on Wednesday represent the developing world's first chance to bring some balance to a global marketplace they see tilted against them.
The pivotal point for them, and the talks, is agriculture.
The talks are just as important for wealthy nations hoping to fend off a new wave of protectionism by reaching trade agreements that show the value of opening markets even further. In the United States, with manufacturing jobs disappearing by the tens of thousands, the Bush administration hopes that increased trade possibilities, especially in services, will spur the economy.
At this midpoint in the trade round - the talks began in Doha, Qatar, two years ago and are expected to finish in 2005 - the minimal goal is to show that they are moving ahead. Besides agriculture, the agenda includes cutting tariffs on industrial goods, reducing barriers to foreign investment and scaling back policies that bar "dumping" of exported goods at low prices.
Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, said in an interview that with the economy showing some signs of recovery, the Cancun talks are important "to deepen the growth and broaden it."
"Trade is the vehicle by which that happens," he said.
As they arrive here, trade officials will be scurrying to make up for lost time. There has been little progress since the Doha meetings shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. The representatives of the 146 nations missed every deadline they set for themselves, and they have yet to agree on exactly what they will discuss. And the two giants of trade - Europe and the United States - have been battling in the last year over everything from steel tariffs to genetically modified food. No trade round can succeed without a basic agreement between Washington and Brussels.
Thousands of demonstrators - farmers, union organizers, peasants, AIDS activists - have descended on this beach resort town, but most are far from the conference centers, barricaded off by thousands of police. While many hope to persuade through seminars, others have threatened to stop the sessions.
Senior trade officials, afraid of another catastrophe like Seattle, when the talks there four years ago deteriorated as demonstrators were subdued by riot police, began private meetings this summer to head off failure.
Then two weeks ago the United States broke an important political and emotional deadlock. American negotiators agreed to accept a proposal they had rejected last December to give the world's poorest countries access to life-saving medicines. That agreement breathed life into the trade round and demonstrated that the United States would join Europe in working out a humanitarian compromise over initial objections from their pharmaceutical firms.
This agreement followed on the heels of an American-European proposal to put aside their differences over agriculture and offer a loose framework for finding a compromise.
In the world of trade, most developing countries should have an advantage in agriculture, because their production and labor costs are low. But farming is now the most protected sector of the world's richest countries. Together, those countries pay their farmers $300 billion every year in subsidies, maintain high agricultural tariffs that block farm imports and spend millions subsidizing food exports. Much of what they produce is sold overseas below cost, lowering world prices and undermining poor farmers.
Africans find this double attack of subsidies and tariffs especially maddening since they have been told they should trade their way out of poverty, not look for foreign aid.
"For Africa, it is a major problem," said Joy Spencer, an agriculture expert from Sierra Leone working for the Consumer Project on Technology, a nonprofit group. "People can't better themselves if they can't feed themselves, and farmers are being driven off their land."
Many trade experts doubt that Europe and the United States will agree to change their ways before this round's deadline.
The Bush administration, facing a presidential election next year, is unlikely to do anything to antagonize the farm belt, which supported Mr. Bush strongly in the last election.
Although the expansion of the European Union next year will help push those countries to reduce individual subsidies, C. Fred Bergsten, director of the International Institute of Economics, said that final agricultural reforms will only come about in 2006 in Europe.
"When you pull all that together, along with the wariness and new clout of the developing world, Cancun will not be as important as it was intended to be," said Mr. Bergsten.
Even if these talks do not succeed, Mr. Zoellick said he would continue with his trade agenda. Since President Bush won trade promotion authority from Congress last year, Mr. Zoellick has been negotiating new bilateral and regional free trade agreements to the consternation of many World Trade Organization officials.New York Times:
