Cairns Group – Trade β Blog

WTO farm talks head into 2022 with lots of ‘will’ but not much ‘way’

The fate of the chair’s draft lies in the balance as members declare commitment to the talks but remain as divided as ever

UPDATE
May 19, 2022 informal negotiations meeting: in preparation for the re-scheduled Ministerial Conference: Twitter thread (food security, export restrictions, public stockholding, agriculture negotiations as a whole).

March 21, 2022 negotiations meeting: Twitter thread, WTO news story, chair’s statement on consultations (public stockholding, special safeguard mechanism, agriculture negotiations as a whole, including a proposed session on food security)

May 31, 2022: new draft texts circulated ahead of the June 12–15 re-scheduled Ministerial Conference.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 25, 2022 | UPDATED JUNE 8, 2022

WTO agriculture negotiations started the year 2022 with members taking stock of where the talks were and how they might proceed, after a year of hard and intensive work that produced new proposals, but no change in fundamental, deadlocked positions.

The momentum had been created as negotiators strove to present common ground for the Ministerial Conference, scheduled for November 30–December 3, 2021, but postponed because of travel and other restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An informal negotiation meeting on January 24, 2022, cast doubt on the fate of the only attempt to reflect the current state of the talks in a single text, according to a trade official in Geneva — “to be or not to be”, the official said.

WTO agriculture talks 2021: where ambition and cynicism collide

Prospects and developments in the WTO agriculture negotiations in 2021

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 4, 2021 | UPDATED JULY 29, 2021

A strange atmosphere surrounds the agriculture talks in the World Trade Organization (WTO), which resumed on Friday February 5, 2021 and continued through to July, as members to submitted numerous new proposals on a wide range of issues. Consensus stays blocked, even on subjects that ought to be simple.

What WTO leadership means and where the UK would fit in

People who should know better keep talking about the UK becoming a leader in the World Trade Organization. What exactly does this mean and what are the chances?

By Peter Ungphakorn
NOVEMBER 8, 2017 | UPDATED MAY 8, 2019

Too busy to read this longish version? Here are the main points:
How to be a trade champion: A guide for busy politicians

Brexit will allow Britain to lead the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Legatum Institute claims in a new paper published on November 4, 2017.

The paper, “The Brexit Inflection Point: The Pathway to Prosperity”, is new but the claim is not — not entirely. Continue reading “What WTO leadership means and where the UK would fit in”

Who put the boot into Canadian dairy and why?

When journalists don’t understand WTO work they jump to wrong conclusions. The questions Canada faced in the Agriculture Committee were not a geopolitical attack. They were more important than that

By Robert Wolfe and Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JUNE 23, 2017 | UPDATED JUNE 24, 2017

Agriculture attachés from around the world may be surprised to learn that Vladimir Putin has taken an interest in their work in Geneva and is targeting Canada’s supply-managed dairy industry.

Or maybe they won’t as they realise a huge amount of journalistic licence has been injected into this account of a routine but important meeting at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on June 7 (The Globe and Mail, “Countries pile on in attack of Canada’s dairy regime”, June 18, 2017).