Pre-ministerial draft shows little to harvest in WTO farm talks

UPDATES
See “WTO farm talks head into 2022 with lots of ‘will’ but not much ‘way’”
and May 31, 2022, pre-Ministerial Conference drafts (agriculture decision, food security declaration, and exempting the World Food programme from export restrictions decision)

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 9, 2021 | UPDATED JUNE 8, 2021

A week bef0re the now-postponed World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference was due to start, WTO agriculture negotiators received a revised draft from Gloria Abraham Peralta, Costa Rica’s ambassador and the talks’ chair.

The new assessment and draft text is still in the form of a proposed decision for the ministers. It was circulated on November 23, 2021. The conference was postponed three days later on November 26. It was due to take place on November 30–December 3.

The new text was slimmed down from the 27 pages of the July 29 text, to 16 pages, still covering eight topics. This was not because gaps between members’ positions had narrowed. Rather, some issues had proved so intractable that the chair had simply thrown out large chunks of text.

[Public stockholding] has turned out to be the most difficult issue in the agriculture negotiations

— Gloria Abraham Peralta

The page-count was also reduced by combining eight separate draft decisions into one single text.

One commentator has slammed the draft for being completely empty.

“It has absolutely nothing in it. Basically, it says: We will negotiate on market access. We will negotiate on export competition. We will negotiate on domestic support. And not much else,” wrote Australian trade lawyer Brett Williams on the International Economic Law and Policy Blog.

That is a bit harsh. WTO members and their chair had worked hard in the previous months.

Draft chair’s text November 2021 for the WTO agriculture negotiations

New dates
On February 23, 2022, WTO members meeting as the General Council
agreed to reschedule the Ministerial Conference for the week of June 13

See also
Pre-ministerial draft shows little to harvest in WTO farm talks

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 9, 2021 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 24, 2022

Note: the official draft text is available as a public document here. It was circulated on November 23, 2021 by Ambassador Gloria Abraham Peralta of Costa Rica, the present chair of the negotiations. See the WTO news story of November 25 on the release and discussion.

As with the version from July, the new docusment starts with an assessment by the chair, with an introduction, eight subject headings, and a conclusion. Then come annexes, the main one with a draft text covering all the eight headings — originally eight separate draft decisions — followed by a draft decision on exempting the World Food Programme from export restrictions.

In these pages, the text has been reorganised so the assessment and draft text for each subject are brought together under a single subject heading on a single page:

1. Introduction and draft preamble (on this page)
2. Domestic support and draft
3. Market access and draft
4. Export competition [where export subsidies might be hidden] and draft
5. Export restrictions and draft (including decision on World Food Programme)
6. Cotton and draft
7. Special safeguard mechanism (SSM) and draft
8. Public stockholding for food security purposes (PSH) [where purchases at government-set prices are trade-distorting domestic support] and draft
9. Transparency and draft
10. Conclusion (on this page)

Draft chair’s text July 2021 for the WTO agriculture negotiations

See also
New agriculture draft suggests nervousness in divided WTO

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 3, 2021 | UPDATED AUGUST 3, 2021

Note: the official draft text is here with a small correction here. It was circulated on July 29 by Ambassador Gloria Abraham Peralta of Costa Rica, the present chair of the negotiations.

A revised version was circulated on November 23, 2021

The original starts with an assessment by the chair, with a long introduction, eight subject headings, and a conclusion. Then comes an annex with draft texts for decisions or agreements on each of those subjects.

Here, the text has been reorganised so the assessment and draft text for each subject are brought together under a single subject heading:

1. Introduction (on this page)
2. Domestic support and draft
3. Market access and draft
4. Export competition [where export subsidies might be hidden] and draft
5. Export restrictions and draft
6. Cotton and draft
7. Special safeguard mechanism (SSM) and draft
8. Public stockholding for food security purposes (PSH) [where purchases at government-set prices are trade-distorting domestic support] and draft
9. Transparency and draft
10. Conclusion (on this page)

New agriculture draft suggests nervousness in divided WTO

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JULY 30, 2021 | UPDATED SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

This has now been revised throughout, based on the actual text

As the World Trade Organization began its 2021 summer break, Gloria Abraham Peralta, Costa Rica’s ambassador and WTO agriculture negotiations chair, circulated her first draft negotiating text, stressing that delegates will need to move quickly to compromise and make a difference to people’s lives.

The 27-page draft, covering eight topics, is designed to focus negotiators’ attentions on what might be agreed at the November 30–December 3 WTO Ministerial Conference, three months after they return in September. It shows members are as divided as ever with little convergence after months of work.

The text is not a public document, but it has been leaked. It was circulated on July 29, 2021 as a restricted document, the first time a chair has done that since the agriculture negotiations began over two decades ago, in 2000.

Behind the rhetoric: Does the WTO need a third ‘safeguard’ against import surges?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 30, 2020 | UPDATED AUGUST 31, 2020

On July 29, 2008, an attempt by a group of trade ministers to conclude the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed in acrimony.

Pascal Lamy, who had chaired the talks as WTO director-general, said members had converged towards consensus on 18 out of 20 outstanding topics. They had failed on the 19th, he said: the “special safeguard mechanism”.

India’s representative at the time, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, was scathing. “The most important thing was the livelihood security, the vulnerability of poor farmers, which could not be traded off against the commercial interests of the developed countries,” he told journalists.