WTO farm talks seek fresh thinking without losing everything

PREVIOUS STORIES
Seven talking points after the WTO’s 2024 Ministerial Conference
Chair’s draft pushes WTO farm talks deadlines back to next conference
‘Mission impossible’ and ‘mission essential’ collide in WTO farm talks
See also all stories on this topic (tagged “agriculture negotiations”)

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Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
APRIL 21, 2024 | UPDATED APRIL 21, 2024

Negotiators in the World Trade Organization’s farm talks broadly agree that a new approach is needed to revive the talks after they failed completely at the Abu Dhabi Ministerial Conference, but they differ on whether to tackle the entire subject or focus on priority areas.

On the table in the April 16, 2024 meeting was a proposal from Brazil for a decision by the General Council in July. This would effectively turn the scrapped draft from Abu Dhabi into a postponed decision, while removing the no longer available option of agreeing on over-the-limit subsidies in food stockpiling (“PSH”) at the Ministerial Conference.

The WTO’s General Council has the power to take decisions on behalf of its Ministerial Conferences.

In a separate process, WTO members also agreed on a non-binding document on food security, including export restrictions, also a binned agricultural text in Abu Dhabi.

Chair’s draft pushes WTO farm talks deadlines back to next conference

PREVIOUS STORY
‘Mission impossible’ and ‘mission essential’ collide in WTO farm talks

SEE ALSO
WTO ministers’ meeting — no interaction, no movement, just speeches
Texts: state of play in WTO farm talks and the crisis-meeting invitation
and all stories on this topic (tagged “food stockholding”)

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UPDATE: The draft prepared for the February 26–29, 2024 Ministerial Conference was circulated on February 16. It still pushed the deadlines back to the next conference, but with options throughout: members “shall” agree by then or they “agree to work towards” the target.

The deadlock remained over whether price support in food security stockpiling (PSH) should be a stand-alone decision at this conference or resolved with all the other topics by the next one.

See the full update below

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Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
FEBRUARY 5, 2024 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 18, 2024

World Trade Organization agriculture negotiators are spending the first two weeks of February scrutinising a draft text for the WTO’s upcoming Ministerial Conference.

In a meeting on January 30, 2024 they accepted the draft as the document to work on for the February 26–29 conference in Abu Dhabi — the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference, called “MC13” by insiders.

It was prepared by the talks’ chair, Ambassador Alparslan Acarsoy of Türkiye.

The 5-page draft is detailed, but for most issues it postpones any resolution until the Ministerial Conference after Abu Dhabi — “MC14” — normally within two years.

However, one issue still threatens to sink the whole effort. This is about finding a long-term solution for the present short term fix for over-the-limit subsidies used to buy into food security stocks (explained here).

Members disagree on whether this should be a single-issue decision or part of a package covering the whole of domestic support. (More below.)

A WTO website news story summarises its content in detail.

‘Mission impossible’ and ‘mission essential’ collide in WTO farm talks

SEE ALSO
WTO ministers’ meeting — no interaction, no movement, just speeches
Texts: state of play in WTO farm talks and the crisis-meeting invitation
and all stories on this topic (tagged “food stockholding”)

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Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
JANUARY 17, 2024 | UPDATED JANUARY 18, 2024

The US, EU and the majority of the Cairns Group told fellow agriculture negotiators at the World Trade Organization yesterday (January 16) that a stand-alone decision on relaxing rules on food security stocks procured with higher than permitted subsidies will not be possible at next month’s WTO Ministerial Conference.

The writing had been on the wall for some time. In this meeting, according to sources, the US seems to have taken the lead, in declaring that deep divisions among members cannot be resolved and therefore a consensus decision at the Abu Dhabi conference will be impossible.

The US reaction is said to have come after India sought to “refresh members’ memory” by recalling mandates from previous years.

The purpose for India and its allies would be to find a permanent solution to replace the present temporary fix for when developing countries exceed their domestic support entitlements through purchases into food security stocks at subsidised prices.

Sceptics delay proposal for more WTO documents to be made public

See also
WTO reform: 39 members call for more information to be made public
How wide should the WTO window be set? 2 External transparency

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 15, 2023 | UPDATED DECEMBER 15, 2023

India, China and Antigua and Barbuda told the last meeting of the year of the World Trade Organization’s General Council on December 14, 2023, that they needed more time to discuss a proposal for more public transparency with WTO documents, effectively kicking the issue down the road.

The proposal has been resubmitted adding the US as a new sponsor — the US was already calling for meeting agendas to be made public as long ago as July 1998. (The updated text is below. The original version is from July.)

The 39 sponsors — Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, the EU (and its 27 members), New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and the US — want many important documents to be released to the public immediately, or faster than at present, some of them currently never made public.

We see no compelling reason why these must be kept restricted as they are formal statements explaining the state of our work
— the proposal’s sponsors, comment A2

They include meeting agendas and notes added to the agenda headings, and a wide range of reports by the WTO Secretariat — “We see no reason why [normal] official documents prepared by the Secretariat should ever be restricted”.

They also include documents that a member may want to be released related to its own individual commitments to open up their markets, currently always secret. These are officially called “schedules” of commitments.

WTO ministers’ meeting — no interaction, no movement, just speeches

SEE ALSO
Ministers preparing for WTO crisis meeting told they need to compromise and
Texts: state of play in WTO farm talks and the crisis-meeting invitation

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Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
DECEMBER 1, 2023 | UPDATED DECEMBER 5, 2023

The supposed “crisis” meeting of about 25 World Trade Organization ministers on November 28, 2023 showed no sign of breaking the deadlock in the WTO agriculture negotiations.

With barely two working months to go members now face the real risk of no outcome at all on agriculture at the February 2024 Ministerial Conference.

According to sources, the three-hour online meeting consisted only of a series of prepared statements echoing what delegations have been saying in the negotiations. No minister made any attempt even to edge towards compromise, even though they had been urged to do so before the meeting.

Nor did the chair attempt to encourage a dialogue, or to explore possible compromises. The presiding minister was UAE Foreign Trade Minister Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, who will chair the Abu Dhabi Ministerial Conference.

India ramps up rhetoric on farm support before major WTO meeting

See also
the previous meeting, an explanation of the issue
and the WTO website’s news story on the whole meeting
Agriculture negotiators discuss new proposals submitted by WTO members

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 21, 2023 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 4, 2023

India has accused its critics in the World Trade Organization (WTO) of “arrogance” and contempt in opposing its position on developing countries using subsidies to purchase rice and other produce into food security stocks.

In a meeting of the WTO’s agriculture negotiations on October 19, 2023, India said, “gone are the days when we were the discipline taker and we had no knowledge and wisdom to talk about a subject that concerns us,” according to a trade official in Geneva.

India’s heightened rhetoric came four days before senior officials from capitals were due to meet in Geneva on October 23–24. The officials will attempt to develop meaningful outcomes for the next WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi, February 2024, including on agriculture and food security.

India said that unless its critics change their “mindset”, they will prevent an agreement being reached at the Ministerial Conference.

As in the previous meeting on October 2, this session of the agriculture negotiations focused mainly on the use of government-supported prices to buy into food security stocks.

The issue is nicknamed “public stockholding” (PSH). But the name is misleading because WTO rules do not prevent stockholding. They only discipline subsidised procurement. Even that is allowed, so long as the developing country stays within its subsidy limit, usually 10% of the value of production.

WTO reform: 39 members call for more information to be made public

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JULY 31, 2023 | UPDATED DECEMBER 15, 2023

The last General Council meeting before the 2023 summer break at the World Trade Organization (WTO), on July 24 and 25, received several documents on WTO reform. Some of them deal with public information and transparency — including making more documents available to the public, and quicker — and deserve more attention.

(Jump to the section on the proposal about derestricting documents, including the full text)

Why is this important? Here’s an example.

One of the most recent developments in the WTO is agreement on an almost-final text among participants negotiating new rules on investment. The deal would streamline investment procedures for the benefit of developing countries — Investment Facilitation for Development.

Ask anyone involved or with privileged information and they will speak glowingly about how useful this is going to be, such as in this session of the WTO Public Forum on September 15, 2023, or this article by ex-WTO Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff.

But the world at large has to take their word for it because the text is still secret. Ask “Why is it secret?” and the answer is “because it’s not completely final”.

The world at large has to take their word for it because the text is still secret

Friend-shoring risks drifting into a costly snow job

By Robert Wolfe*
POSTED JUNE 17, 2023 | UPDATED JUNE 17, 2023

One of the hottest topics in trade right now is the meaning of “security”, particularly as a broad set of exceptions to the international rules that normally constrain policy. It also pops up in another hot topic: how to handle environmental issues such as taxing carbon content, and subsidising favoured environmentally-friendly products.

This can be summed up in a question: have free trade and secure trade become conflicting aims?

The debate hit the headlines under the Trump administration in the US when “security” was used to justify raising trade barriers and providing subsidies to favoured sectors such as steel and agriculture. It seemed any economic setback, from having to import strategic materials to loss of export markets, could be seen as a security issue.

A ‘snow job’ is an attempt to persuade someone that something is good or true when it is not

The Biden administration has rephrased the objective: it’s now “worker-centred”. But the policies have not changed much.

One aspect of this is to try to shift supply chains back home, or failing that to favour off-shore chains in “friendly” countries — “friend-shoring”.

WTO members are slow to ratify the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement

IN A NUTSHELL
Ratifications of the June 2022 Fisheries Subsidies Agreement
May 13, 2024

Total ratifications = 75
(= 46% of all members, = 68% of the first target)
First target (two thirds of 164 members) = 110
Additional ratifications needed to reach two thirds = 35

Members that have not ratified = 88
Eventual target (agreement applies to all members) = 164 members (or 163 ratifications*)

● The agreement takes effect after two thirds of the membership have ratified (“accepted”) it. Even then it only applies to the countries that have ratified
● The WTO’s up-to-date list of ratifications is here

* So long as the EU’s ratifications count as 27 (the number of EU member states) instead of 28 (member states + EU itself, also a WTO member), total ratifications cannot exceed 163

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JUNE 7, 2023 | UPDATED MAY 14, 2024

June 17, 2023 is already buried in the distant the past. That was the first anniversary of WTO members agreeing by consensus to curb fisheries subsidies. It was also the original target for enough countries to ratify it so that deal could take effect.

That target was then moved to the February 26–29, 2024 Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi. When that was going to be missed by a substantial shortfall, the deadline was quietly dropped.

Instead the Ministerial Conference was turned into a celebration of the ratifications that had been submitted, including nine at the conference. That brought the total to 70, still 40 short of the 110 needed to activate the agreement in ratifying countries.

It may take many more months, if not a year or two, to reach 110 — two thirds of the membership. Even then 53 countries will still have not ratified the agreement, meaning it will not apply to them. (Ignoring the likelihood that by then the WTO is likely to have at least two more members.)

COUNTRIES THAT STILL HAVE NOT RATIFIED THE 2022 AGREEMENT
MAY 13, 2024

Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eswatini, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, India*, Indonesia*, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico*, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco*, Mozambique, Myanmar*, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, North Macedonia, Oman*, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand*, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam*, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe (88)

* In the top 20 fishing nations by catch size (FAO data)

‘Sriracha’ sauce: is it what it says on the bottle?

Image: Si Racha coast; sauces from left: Sriraja Panich, Huy Fong/Rooster, Flying Goose, Three Mountains, Exotic Food (USA style)

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Sriracha

— Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) September 26, 2020

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MAY 29, 2023 | UPDATED JULY 2, 2023

Parts on the history of Sriracha sauce have been revised considerably (May 31, 2023) following further research into Thai-language material

Fancy a Japanese seafood omelette with “mayo spun through with sriracha”? Smoked cod head “doused in a sriracha emulsion”? How about McDonald’s sriracha-and-kale burger, described as “an aging hipster’s cry for help”? Or just sausages and brown sauce mixed with sriracha in proportions of 5:1.

Sriracha is gaining popularity among chefs and people who just enjoy their food. But what exactly is it?

First, you may have noticed that “Trade β Blog” is about trade. So this piece is not about the joys of eating or cooking with the distinctive chilli sauce. It’s about a controversial issue in trade: the use of a geographical name to identify a product. But it does include some blind tasting in the search for authenticity.