The new USTR, Ron Kirk has announced that he’s interested in pushing ahead on Doha and is aware of a need for a ‘new approach’. However, the FT reports that:
WTO members have given a cool reception to a proposal by the US and Canada that negotiators should drop their so far unsuccessful efforts to agree a general formula for cutting tariffs on farm and industrial goods in favour of a bilateral “request-offer” procedure used in past trade rounds.
This procedure would overcome objections by US farmers and business groups that the myriad flexibilities and exceptions for developing countries built into the present approach make it impossible to see what market access they will gain in practice.
He’s right, at least, that a new approach is necessary. That the WTO needs reforming is not in doubt, but even in the shorter-term, the style of negotiations will have to change in order for Doha to get anywhere.
According to Reuters:
Kirk took up a Canadian proposal to move beyond the current focus of talks which aim to reach an outline deal on the formulas for cutting tariffs and subsidies, known in WTO jargon as modalities, and go straight into detailed bilateral negotiations on cutting individual tariffs, known as scheduling.
U.S. ambassador Peter Allgeier told Wednesday’s meeting this was not about skipping modalities or dropping multilateral talks but supplementing them in the interests of transparency…
It could work like this. A U.S. negotiator sits down with her Indian counterpart to get a sense of how many U.S. tractors India would be willing to import, and at what duty. In return, the Indian diplomat would make clear how many temporary work visas India would seek in return.
But as IPE Zone rightly asks, ‘if you’re just going to have a noodle bowl of bilateral deals, scheduling, or whatever you call it, doesn’t that render a multilateral round superfluous?’ I’ve always tended to lean to the view that a multilateral trading regime is preferable to an ad hoc, bilteral one. That may be just some idealistic liberal internationalism in me. But despite its flaws, the WTO is in principle democratically constituted and provides the best chance for developing countries to make their case. It’s a lot easier to get bullied if it’s just you and the other guy and he’s got you over a barrel.
Whatever Ron Kirk might think about the pragmatism of his new approach, we are faced with the old question: is a bad deal better or worse than no deal at all?
0 Responses to “Doha prospects, Pangloss-style”