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G20+ might just add up for the
WTO
By Mario Osava
RIO DE
JANEIRO - The new bloc of developing countries that came
to the world's attention in the fifth World Trade
Organization (WTO) ministerial conference last month in
Mexico may have an uncertain future, but it could also
play a key role in the fate of the multilateral trade
talks, say analysts in Brazil.
The bloc known as
the G20+ (or G22 until recently) "is perhaps the only
hope of sustaining the WTO," Mario Marconini, the
executive director of the Brazilian Center on
International Relations and a former secretary of
foreign trade, said in an interview with IPS.
The WTO negotiations have been left without
leadership, now that the United States "has abandoned
its traditional stance, and become protectionist," for
electoral reasons, in sectors like steel, textiles and
agriculture, said Marconini.
The US has
traditionally led negotiating processes like the Uruguay
Round - which ended in 1994 and gave rise to the WTO -
and the current Doha Development Round, launched in 2001
in the capital of Qatar.
But now "it is not
interested in multilateralism," and its private sector
does not want the market to be opened up any further, he
said.
And since the European Union (EU) "never
leads, but reacts to those rounds, and is currently even
more concentrated on its own integration process, with
the incorporation of another 10 countries," the
multilateral trade system depends on the strength of
developing countries to restart the derailed talks, he
added.
"'What we are looking at is a shift in
paradigm, an inverting of roles," with developing
nations now heading the fight for trade liberalization
in the face of resistance from rich countries.
Marconini said that the G20+ is a "laboratory"
that must test whether a significant reduction in farm
subsidies can be achieved, and which "functions well
because its members have something in common; they all
paid the price of opening up their markets" - as China
did, for example, to enter the WTO - and now want some
compensation.
The Uruguay Round was poorly
implemented in practice, which hurt developing
countries, especially in terms of agriculture, but in
textiles as well, he said.
WTO director general
Supachai Panitchpakdi has recognized the importance of
the role the G20+ can play in pulling the multilateral
talks out of the current deadlock, after the fiasco of
the September 10-14 ministerial conference in the
Mexican resort of Cancun.
Supachai asked the
bloc, through its spokesman in Cancun, Brazilian Foreign
Minister Celso Amorim, to engage in dialogue with the US
and the EU in order to get the Doha Development Round
back on track.
The G20+ has enormous weight, as
it brings together developing world giants like China,
India, Brazil and South Africa. But it is also
"heterogeneous", its members have different interests in
agriculture, and it requires "an active policy and
intense dialogue" to hold together and avoid fissures,
said Marconini.
The bloc originally started out
with 20 members, expanded to 23, and then lost one by
the ministerial conference in Cancun, when it began to
be referred to as the G22. But Colombia and Peru have
dropped out in the past few days.
It is now made
up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa
Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia,
Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, the Philippines,
South Africa, Thailand and Venezuela.
The losses
''will slightly weaken, but won't pull apart the group,
which would only be seriously weakened if a country like
India were to pull out," said Pedro Camargo Neto, a
former secretary of production and marketing at the
Agriculture Ministry, and an active representative of
the private sector in the multilateral talks, as an
adviser to the Brazilian Rural Association.
Colombia's withdrawal was expected, since "its
priority is the drug question" and the fight against
narco-trafficking, said Camargo Neto. But he said he was
taken by surprise by Peru's departure, which he
attributed to "economic pressure from the United
States".
Nevertheless, a bloc comprised of
Argentina, Brazil, China, India and South Africa "would
be more than sufficient", he said, noting that even a
grouping made up of just Brazil and India would have
considerable weight.
The G20+ was formed mainly
by members of the Cairns Group, which links 17
agricultural exporting countries that have been fighting
farm subsidies and barriers to agricultural trade since
the 1980s. But the Cairns Group failed to show the
cohesion and agility needed in Cancun to stand up to the
US and EU proposal to limit the phasing out of farm
subsidies.
Brazil made concessions to China and
India, narrowing its demands for access to their
markets, in order to create a G20+ that represents more
than half of the global population.
"India
always cites its 400 million farmers as a reason for not
opening up its market any further, while China argues
that it just joined the WTO, and cannot open up
immediately," said Camargo Neto.
Besides, he
argued, the big obstacle keeping developing countries
from expanding their imports is not "tariffs, but the
weak buying power of local populations", which means
that fighting to reduce import duties, as the US is
doing, makes little sense.
Brazil's negotiators
point out that the US changed its position in Cancun.
The proposals set forth by the G20+, which Washington
holds responsible for the meeting's failure to reach an
agreement, are "70 to 80 percent in line with the
positions held by the United States at the start of the
Doha Round," according to Foreign Minister Amorim.
Camargo Neto said the original US proposal was
"ambitious, but not coherent with its Farm Bill," nor
with the Trade Promotion Authority (fast track) to
expand farm subsidies and push trade accords through
Congress.
That is why Washington agreed once
again to reach a pact "with the EU, protectionist but
compatible with its laws on agriculture and trade," said
the expert. "The superpowers should be more coherent,
and shouldn't talk about free trade while shelling out
subsidies and practicing protectionism," said Camargo
Neto.
(Inter Press Service)
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