HONG KONG - Among the
estimated 10,000 protesters drawn like moths to a
candle for the six-day sixth ministerial meeting
of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Hong Kong
that began Tuesday, a few committed
anti-globalization diehards carry banners calling
for the WTO to be "junked".
Reports of the
imminent demise of the organization are premature.
Nevertheless, the much-hyped meeting that seeks to
knock down global trade barriers for international
businesses - in the form of a global free trade
pact - opens amid tensions between
developing and industrialized
countries over the support that rich nations give
their farmers, while demanding that developing
countries further open up their markets to goods
and services.
The talks, called the Doha
round, after the Qatari capital where they started
in 2001, constitute an ambitious plan that would
end the way global trade was done in the 20th
century and totally liberalize it, reducing or
removing tariffs on a global level and allowing
international corporations free play.
In
addition to the protesters, trade ministers and
other officials from 148 member nations, the
meeting is being attended by 6,000 delegates,
2,000 non-governmental organization (NGO) members
and 3,000 journalists. Parts of downtown Hong Kong
have been blocked to regular traffic, while
businesses closed in a handful of luxury hotels in
the Wan Chai district where the talks will run.
Topping the ministers' agenda is a trade
conflict between the United States, Europe and
Japan on the one hand and regional heavyweights on
the other side from developing countries like
Brazil, Egypt and India over the scope of the
support rich nations give to their farmers. The
dispute has soured the atmosphere in the runup to
the meetings with widespread expectations that the
talks will be derailed. Despite intense
negotiations, trade diplomats have so far failed
to unlock the impasse.
The US, the one
likely to gain the most from open markets, says it
had offered a comprehensive deal to cut its
subsidies and tariffs to revive the talks.
Washington, however, has accused Europe of
blocking the talks by not reciprocating with
high-enough cuts.
Unlike the 90% cuts
Washington says it's ready to make, Europe says it
can only slash its support by about 45%, still
allowing only limited access by the US and other
countries to its markets. The Europeans say their
decision on reducing support is governed by
internal laws and agreements of the European Union
(EU).
According to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, the
Paris-based organization representing 30 developed
countries, its members spent $279 billion on
farmers in 2004 through direct taxpayer subsides
and protective trade barriers. The US share
amounted to $46.5 billion. For US farmers,
government support accounted for 18% of all farm
income. In Canada, it accounted for 21%, in the EU
33%, in Japan 56% and in South Korea, Switzerland
and Norway, more than 60%.
Rich nations
are likely to dole out a package of incentives for
the least developed countries as a way to save
face in case the talks collapse. The package could
include duty- and quota-free access for the
poorest countries, especially cotton exporters in
West Africa, and more aid and training in return
for trade.
The EU has agreed to raise its
spending on trade-related aid to 1 billion euros
($1.2 billion) a year, from about 400 million
euros, while Japan has announced that it would
provide $10 billion in trade-related aid to
least-developed countries.
Some activists
have called the "development package", as it is
now touted by trade diplomats from the US and
Europe, a decoy to break the near consensus among
poor nations that emerged in the last round of
talks in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003, against giving
in to pressure from rich nations. Amid strong
civil society protests, dozens of developing
nations walked out in Cancun, bringing the talks
to a halt after rich nations refused to consider
cutting their hefty farm subsidies.
"Action on issues of importance to
developing countries, like cotton, [and] aid for
trade and duty- and quota-free access would be
welcome, but it must be part of a bigger deal that
addresses the significant harm caused by rich
countries' agricultural policies," said Phil
Bloomer, a trade expert with the advocacy and
relief organization Oxfam International. "It must
not be a 'sweetener' to disguise the bitter taste
of a bad deal overall."
Developing
countries like Brazil and India complain that
subsidies undercut poor farmers by pushing prices
to ever-lower levels. They also want rich nations
to change their anti-dumping laws which, they say,
raise tariffs and other obstacles to their exports
like citrus fruit and steel.
Another
contentious issue in the WTO agricultural talks is
US food aid, which is being challenged by Europe,
Canada and others as US agribusiness disguised as
export subsidy. Campaigners say that US food aid,
initiated in 1954, continues to be driven by the
motive of disposing large surpluses of cereals and
capturing new markets.
Also in full force
are representatives of the US and European
corporations and manufacturers, many of them
clamoring to lobby their decision-makers to open
more and new markets for their products,
especially in advanced markets like China, India
and Brazil. Apart from agriculture, rich countries
are vying to get developing nations to commit to
agreements on services and industrial market
access.
"People seem to forget that
manufactured goods comprise 75% of world trade,
and we can't strike a deal if we don't include
real trade liberalization for manufactured goods
and services too," said John Engler, president of
the National Association of Manufacturers, a major
US industry group.
A representative of the
software giant Microsoft, who spoke to Inter Press
Service on condition of anonymity, said that his
job in Hong Kong was "to stay as close as possible
to decision-makers" with the purpose of "getting
them to open new markets".
Beijing has
said little in the runup to the meeting, primarily
as China's trade policies are not at the heart of
the deadlock. "What is China going to say that's
going to change things? It's a stalemate," says
Bob Broadfoot, director of the Economic and
Political Risk Consultancy in Hong Kong, in a
report from the Associated Press.
Other
regional export powers like Japan and South Korea
are also staying on the sidelines.
Why they're protesting While police say they have deployed 9,000 men
and women to prevent a repeat of the massive
protests that accompanied the Cancun and Seattle
ministerial meets, the estimated 10,000 protesters
plan to show just how big is the global movement
against the WTO.
Three big demonstrations
have been planned, which activist groups have
pledged will be peaceful even as they pursue other
strategies to block all possible breakthroughs in
the stalled trade meeting. Farmers and fisherfolk
from many parts of the world, including 1,500
South Koreans, are expected to dominate the
protests. Fisherfolk from Thailand, Indonesia,
Vietnam and Cambodia planned to sail several boats
into Victoria Harbor to voice their demands to WTO
delegates inside the Convention Center, which is
surrounded on three sides by water.
The
South Korean farmers aim to push the WTO to
preserve tariffs to protect their country's rice
market and their livelihoods. For fisherfolk from
Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, WTO
policies are leading to overfishing and
threatening their way of life and food supply,
they claim.
More than 5,000 organizations,
movements and groups joined in a "People's Caravan
for Justice and Sovereignty", which will end its
two-month journey in Hong Kong this week. They are
demanding trade justice and an end to unjust free
trade.
The Global Call to Action Against
Poverty collected close to 280,000 email petitions
in just three weeks from people around the world
who are asking the WTO to stand firm on
commitments to achieve the Millennium Development
Goals that were established at the United Nations
in 2000, especially to tackle extreme poverty.
Campaigners are demanding that trade ministers at
the WTO stop pushing countries to open up their
economies; allow poor nations the space to
determine their own trade policies; protect their
public services; and end dumping by rich
countries.
Women's groups, trade unions,
youth organizations, international NGOs,
grassroots movements and numerous other civil
society groups gathered in Hong Kong will want to
see a substantial shift in national and
international policies that will eliminate
poverty.
When failure is
success The WTO hopes to reach a final
deal by the end of 2006. Members have virtually
given up plans to seal a blueprint in Hong Kong.
But what might be considered a failure in
Hong Kong could actually turn out to be a success.
"No deal is by far better than a bad deal," Eve
Mitchell from Friends of the Earth told Inter
Press Service. "We cannot see a bad deal, bad for
the poor people, bad for the environment, bad for
climate change, come out of Hong Kong, and somehow
call it a development round." At present a
"development round has been turned into a market
access round for multinational companies, and that
is not pro-poor, sustainable development", she
said.
"Countries like Brazil and India are
seen as leaders, not only in their regions but
globally for developing countries because they
have a certain strength and a certain status,"
Mitchell said. "They are naturally seen as people
who can be authority, also because of their
populations and the sizes of their economy," she
said. "All those kinds of things make them very
strong, and they need to stay strong."
She
added: "We can't possibly see what's on the table
at the World Trade Organization now can be good
for poor countries. So that means that if
countries like India and Brazil have to hang on in
there until a good deal comes through, then that's
absolutely what they should do."
What is
on the table at present is a deal that means that
"the poorer you are, the worse off you're likely
to be", she said. "The numbers that governments
like the European Union and the United States are
looking at are global averages. What's going to
happen to people on the ground?"
Of
particular danger are the proposals on
non-agricultural market access (NAMA), she said.
"What we found is a number of very disturbing
things. Over a billion of the world's poorest
people, people who are already living on less than
a dollar a day, will be worse off under NAMA."
That proposal is bad for development and
also bad for the environment, she said. "NAMA will
threaten our ability to grapple with climate
change, which will hurt all of our economies in
the end. So that can't be a good deal. We've got
to stop it now, and start going in the right
direction."
Alex Wijeratne from ActionAid
said Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath had
already taken a bold stand. "He's saying to the EU
and the US that they have to do more than just
look at the issues those guys are interested in,
and they have to take on board the concerns of
developing countries much more." The NAMA
proposals "could be devastating for India, for
many industries such as the sari industry or
footwear industries", he said.
EU trade
commissioner Peter Mandelson "could easily back
off on the aggressive moves he's making on the two
other areas rather than agriculture", Wijeratne
said. "He's being very aggressive on the NAMA
talks and also on the services talks. He's asking
for very big concessions from developing
countries. Obviously he can also make much bigger
offers on cutting farm subsidies, and back off on
the tariffs as well."
Like Friends of the
Earth, ActionAid, a Britain-based international
anti-poverty NGO, also believes that no deal is
better than a bad deal.
"We want to see a
development round," Wijeratne said. "We don't want
to see a round which just plays to the
self-interest of the US and the EU. And until that
is on the table, we would say be very cautious
about signing this round, because there's very
little that's going to help fight poverty. And
after all, this is what this whole round was
supposed to be about."
What is at stake in
this round is "life or death issues", he said. "If
you're a poor farmer from India, and then you're
flooded with crops from the EU and the US, your
livelihood is in danger."
