Inside US Trade | September 13, 2003
CANCUN--The dynamics in the agriculture negotiations may have shifted today (Sept. 12) with the emergence of a new group of developing countries focused on a different approach to the agriculture negotiations than the G-21 by calling for special protections for small farmers. Specifically, this group is calling for a special safeguard mechanism for developing countries, and for protecting from tariff cuts certain commodities that are deemed to be essential to promoting a country's food security.
A senior U.S. official yesterday emphasized that the presentation of a new agriculture text by Singapore trade minister George Yeo will constitute the " moment of truth" at which countries must decide whether they want to block the process or actually negotiate for trade liberalization. For the members of the G-21 that have trade interests like Brazil and China, it will be the time to decide whether they want to pursue their national interest or not, the official said.
The official accused the G-21 of only focusing on their demands for further cuts in subsidies and fewer commitments on market access for developing countries instead of showing the flexibility required for real negotiations. Separately, EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler said that the G-21 has only laid out its demands and asked others to meet them without addressing their respective sensitivities. "They never deal with other [countries'] concerns, and that is a problem," Fischler said.
Senior U.S. trade officials used the emergence of this group to point out that the G-21 is not representing the interests of all developing countries. However, several of the G-33 countries are already cosponsors of the G-22 paper, including Cuba, Pakistan, the Philippines and Venezuela.
The G-33 of developing countries sees the special safeguard mechanism and SP protection as their most important priorities in the farm talks and of a greater value than eliminating export subsidies or reducing trade-distorting domestic support used by developed countries, according to an Indonesian government source. This is a slightly different position from Brazil and other developing country agriculture exporters in the G-22 group, who in their proposal and public comments have emphasized the need for an end date on the elimination of export subsidies, the elimination of the blue box of support considered less trade-distorting and an agreement on new disciplines on non-trade-distorting support covered by the green box.
The U.S. has resisted use of a special safeguard and SP protection for net food exporters in the developing world such as Brazil and Argentina, but has suggested it could accept such provisions provided their use is limited to a certain number of products. An Indonesian trade official said the U.S had shown a positive response to the need of SP protection for developing countries, but that the question of how many products this SP could apply to needed to be negotiated.
The G-33 developing countries call themselves the "Alliance for Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanism" and includes Indonesia, Belize, Botswana, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines.
Separately, the EU repeated its willingness to agree to eliminate export subsidies on commodities of interest to developing countries. But it said developing countries needed to come to the EU with requests for subsidies to be eliminated in order to determine the commodities of interest to developing countries. EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler however, said nothing is off limits in this EU proposal.
But developing country delegation and private sector sources said this is merely a thinly disguised effort to divide developing countries by getting them to argue amongst themselves over which commodities to eliminate export subsidies. One European government official acknowledged the EU proposal has this aim.Inside US Trade:
