Tag: Domestic support

New proposals stir WTO agriculture negotiations out of deep sleep

Two new radical ideas for cutting domestic subsidies breathe life into the talks. But will they lead to anything?

See also
“Technical note: Agricultural domestic support categories in the WTO”

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JUNE 24, 2023 | UPDATED JUNE 28, 2023

A year ago, persistent deadlock in the World Trade Organization’s agriculture negotiations provided the WTO’s 2022 Ministerial Conference with its biggest failure.

Since then, it’s taken the whole year for the talks to be dragged back into action, much of the hiatus spent haggling, not over substance, but over who should be the new chair — and not for the first time.

Finally, new papers discussed in meetings on June 21–22, 2023 brought negotiators back to the table to discuss seriously some of the deadlocked issues. They include two radically new approaches for limiting farm support that distorts prices and production. (See also the WTO website’s news story.)

One idea would be to set new support limits based on the value of agricultural production. The other would use complicated calculations to slash global farm support by 50%.

Whether either of them produces agreement, where almost a quarter of a century of effort has failed, remains to be seen.

Reactions in the sessions are said to have been mixed, with some enthusiasm, some lukewarm responses and some outright opposition.

“While some WTO members are pushing for resolutions or advancements on issues like domestic support and public stockholding,” Inside US Trade reported (paywalled), “others, like the US, are arguing that the membership should be more pragmatic and focus on achievable outcomes — for instance, reining in export restrictions in agriculture — according to a Geneva-based trade official familiar with agriculture negotiation sessions held this week.”

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WTO agriculture retreat said strong on context but weak on give-and-take

Some who attended blamed the ‘vacuum’ caused by a delay in appointing a new chair, and ambassadors reading from prepared statements

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 26, 2022 | UPDATED OCTOBER 26, 2022

Monday’s (October 24) “retreat” on agriculture at the World Trade Organization (WTO) was supposed to produce new ideas to help move the stalled farm trade talks forward, but some accounts suggest it was stronger on alerting delegates to new challenges than on developing new negotiating approaches.

This seems to contrast with the brainstorming approach seen in a similar event a fortnight earlier on the fisheries subsidies negotiations (October 10, 2022).

Part of the problem may be that a new chair still has not been appointed for the talks — a problem shared with fisheries subsidies, but apparently not affecting that earlier retreat.

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WTO agriculture negotiators face challenge of thinking outside the box(es)

Monday’s retreat is an attempt to produce fresh thinking that might break the deadlock in the two remaining pillars.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 23, 2022 | UPDATED OCTOBER 24, 2022

See also the report on the retreat (published October 26, 2022):
WTO agriculture retreat said strong on context but weak on give-and-take

Brain-storming. Blue sky thinking. Wiping the slate clean. Thinking outside the box. Pick your cliché. World Trade Organization (WTO) members’ ambassadors and agriculture attachés go on a “retreat” tomorrow (October 24) as they try to discover solutions where none have been found for over a decade.

The common impression is that the WTO agriculture negotiations have achieved nothing since they started almost a quarter of a century ago in 2000.

This is partly because after just over a year (in 2001), the talks were rolled into the newly launched and broader Doha Round of WTO negotiations. And now the Doha Round is widely considered to be dead.

Officially the position is more complicated. Some members say the Doha Round is over. Others say the original mandate continues — they refuse to endorse the end of the round.

In practice some parts of the Doha Round have been concluded, such as the Trade Facilitation and Fisheries Subsidies agreements. Other parts are in limbo or the talks have dried up, at least among the full membership. What has faded away is the idea of the talks as one unified package or “single undertaking”.

(An aside here. What almost no one has noticed is that the Trade Negotiations Committee of the WTO membership — with the director-general ex officio in the chair — still meets. This committee was set up specifically within the Doha Round. If the round has ended so should the Trade Negotiations Committee. That would also mean the director-general has no official position in any council or committee of the WTO membership.)

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How to be a trade champion

A guide for busy politicians: size counts—the more you trade, the bigger your clout in the WTO

By Peter Ungphakorn
NOVEMBER 21, 2017 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 21, 2017

International Trade Minister Greg Hands has again proclaimed the UK is a global trade champion only needing to “reclaim our position at heart of global trading system”.

I have written a longer piece on this. Here are some key points for busy readers. I’m using the WTO as the context since that’s where “the heart of the global trading system” is.

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