Six talking points from the year’s final General Council meeting

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 21, 2023 | UPDATED JANUARY 24, 2024

The World Trade Organization’s General Council had 25 items on the agenda for its last meeting of 2023, several of them with multiple sub-items. Most are — frankly — boring although essential for the record of WTO operations.

But some points were worth discussing from the meeting, which we can extend to include year-end sessions of the Trade Negotiations Committee and Dispute Settlement Body.

Here are six. They won’t hit the headlines, except perhaps one, but they do tell us something about the state of play on bigger issues, and where the WTO might be heading, particularly with the February 26–29 Abu Dhabi Ministerial Conference now only two months away.

In General Council India alone opposes investment deal as a WTO agreement

THIS UPDATES AND REPLACES
“118 members want investment facilitation deal to be formal WTO agreement”
(from December 13, 2023)

SEE ALSO
Comment: on India’s claim that a plurilateral WTO deal is ‘illegal’
WTO investment facilitation text completed but still faces uphill battle
Technical note: types of plurilateral deals and adding them to WTO rules
Explainer: The 18 WTO plurilaterals and ‘joint-statement initiatives’
Technical note: Participation in WTO plurilateral talks
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General Council minutes (published a few months after the meeting)
All articles tagged “investment facilitation”

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 18, 2023 | UPDATED JANUARY 2, 2024

India says it will block adding to the official WTO rule-book a new investment facilitation agreement among over 70% of the World Trade Organization members, even though it was the only country to speak against the request in the organisation’s General Council on December 15, 2023.

India’s opposition has implications beyond this particular deal, which is backed by 117 developed and developing countries such as China, the EU, Bolivia, Chad and Laos.

It makes investment facilitation a test case for all rule-making negotiations among subsets of the membership.

The other subjects that could potentially line up to follow investment facilitation into the WTO rule-book include e-commerce and digital trade, plastics pollution, and fossil fuel subsidies, all involving only part of the membership.

WTO members are struggling to conclude several negotiations because of insoluble differences preventing them from reaching consensus agreement.

This means existing agreements are lagging behind the latest developments in global trade — for example in digital trade or sustainability.

Many governments now consider the best way to modernise WTO rules is to try to reach agreement among “the willing” first. The rest of the membership can join later when they are ready.

But to insert an agreement among only the willing into the rule-book still needs consensus support from the whole membership, including non-participants.

If India (previously also supported by South Africa and Namibia) continues to oppose anything short of a fully multilateral agreement, this would prevent the deal from becoming a proper WTO agreement.

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.

Now replaced: 118 members want investment facilitation deal to be formal WTO agreement

This article has been updated and replaced by
In General Council India alone opposes investment deal as a WTO agreement
(December 18, 2023)

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Image credits:
Main image | Michelle Henderson, Unspalsh licence

What’s left to resolve in WTO fisheries subsidies talks after deadline missed

See also:
No WTO fisheries subsidies text this year, negotiations chair concedes
Chair’s new draft starts text-based rush for fish subsidies’ ‘missing piece’
Updates, timeline and links | all articles tagged “fisheries subsidies”
Technical note on subsidies for fisheries

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 12, 2023 | UPDATED DECEMBER 13, 2023

The chair of the World Trade Organization’s fisheries subsidies negotiations and Iceland’s ambassador, Einar Gunnarsson, admitted on on December 8, 2023, that there would not be an agreed text by the end of the year, despite a commitment from senior officials six weeks earlier that there would.

He and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told ambassadors at the end of the final “fish week” of the year that they still hoped that the differences could be settled by the Ministerial Conference in February next year — although the next talks are now not scheduled until mid-January.

They noted that delegates showed they were determined to reach agreement, and were encouraged by various proposed amendments to the chair’s September 4 draft designed to bridge the differences.

Texts on the table (details below) show that members diverge on a wide range of topics, particularly whether the biggest players should face extra scrutiny and if so how they would be identified, and the details of exemptions for developing countries.

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 in silent protest over Cairns Group subsidy proposal in WTO farm talks

SEE ALSO
Text: the Cairns Group’s 2023 proposal on agricultural domestic support
with notes and explanations

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UPDATE: The story below is mainly about the session on subsidised procurement for food security stocks. The meeting continued to November 22 and included a presentation by India, in a session on domestic support more generally, calling for “fixed external reference prices” to be updated. They are used to calculate trade-distorting domestic support, and are currently for 1986–88 (explained here). Reactions were mixed according to this WTO website news story.

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Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
NOVEMBER 22, 2023 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 29, 2023

World Trade Organization (WTO) agriculture negotiations were plunged deeper into deadlock this week (November 20 and 21, 2023) when India refused even to discuss a Cairns Group proposal to cut trade-distorting domestic support.

In an attempt to rescue the talks in time for the next WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi, February 26–29, 2024, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has called an urgent on-line meeting of ministers from some key players on November 28.

Cairns Group circulates ambitious WTO plan for reforming farm support

SEE ALSO
The Cairns Group’s Analysis of Trends in Green Box Support (December 21, 2023)
Text: the Cairns Group’s 2023 proposal on agricultural domestic support
with notes and explanations

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Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
NOVEMBER 4, 2023 | UPDATED JANUARY 17, 2024

The Cairns Group of agricultural exporting countries has circulated a detailed proposal to slash trade-distorting farm support in World Trade Organization members, halving the total global entitlement to subsidise, and to resolve the deadlock over food security stocks procured through subsidy.

The proposal circulated on November 2, 2023, is drafted as a decision for the next WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi, February 26–29, 2024. It is extremely ambitious and is unlikely to receive consensus support by February. Whether agreement on it can be reached at all, even after negotiated changes, remains to be seen.

(A revision was circulated on January 12, 2024, adding Ukraine as a new sponsor)

Its focus is on lowering the ceilings (reducing the “entitlements”) for each WTO member. This will impact countries whose present domestic support for agriculture is close to their limits but not those who have already cut their actual subsidies to much lower levels.

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 senior officials face struggle to avoid distractions ‘elsewhere’

UPDATE October 30, 2023—The G7 trade ministers’ statement issued in Japan on October 2023 covers a lot of these issues.


UPDATE October 25, 2023—As we thought, little has emerged on the substance, particularly whether the officials narrowed any gaps on substance, or showed they were receptive to others’ concerns and therefore prepared to move from existing positions.

The chairs’ summary (with oral reports from break-out sessions) and the WTO website news story are optimistic — more than some might be — but mainly based on the process and the tone, at least as far as we can tell from their descriptions.

For example, they were encouraged by the agreement to bring forward the target for concluding a fisheries subsidies text to the end of this year. But what does it really signify? Does it show the chances of a deal have improved? Or is it simply practical — that a text is needed by about that time if a deal is to be concluded by the February Ministerial Conference. There was no report of any movement in the widely differing positions on the text.

The rest of their summary seems similar, and includes some floated views that will not work.

Whether that translates into genuine progress in the final months of the year remains to be seen. Which is more-or-less what we suggested.

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By Peter Ungphakorn and Robert Wolfe
POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2023 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 1, 2023

In the middle of last month, a well-known journalist specialising in trade made “one of my infrequent trips” to the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He found that “the big trade news” during the WTO’s high profile annual public forum was “unilateral action that took place elsewhere”.

That just about sums up the situation facing senior officials of WTO member governments as they head for one of their own infrequent trips to the WTO’s Geneva offices.

On Monday and Tuesday (October 23–24, 2023), officials from capitals have been summoned to Geneva to try to drag themselves, their counterparts and their Geneva delegations further along the road towards meaningful results when their ministers gather in Abu Dhabi early next year (February 26–29, 2024).