The Doha negotiations have been suspended indefinitely.
But while Member countries took note of and accepted the suspension as an inevitable course given the divergences on views and positions, majority of the Members including the Philippines continue to support the Doha Round and have expressed both their hopes that the negotiations could begin anew as soon as possible and their willingness to contribute to the effort to save it.
The desire by Member countries to save the round stem primarily from the view that the best chance for developing countries to get a fair trade deal is through a multilateral system.
The fear of a collapse of the multilateral system therefore and the shift to more bilateral negotiations is the underlying motivation for any attempt to resuscitate the round in the coming months.
As Member countries now pause to reflect on the future of the round and the WTO, it is the time to revisit the Doha Negotiations, re-examine the positions that the Philippines have taken and take stock of what we have gained and lost in the process and begin the more critical work of recasting our trade policies.
For the Stop the New Round Coalition– a broad multi-sectoral coalition that has been campaigning against the Doha Round since 2003– the suspension of the Doha Round should be viewed as a wake up call to developing countries like the Philippines that the Doha Round betrays rather than promotes development.
The collapse therefore of the current trade talks would in fact be a positive development for poor countries like the Philippines.
The continuing debate on many of the critical issues and the failure time and again of Member countries to come to a consensus should be a signal as well that it is time to explore alternatives to the WTO. A world beyond the WTO is indeed possible!
Five years ago, the Doha round was launched as a “development round” promising to put the interests of developing countries especially the least developed among them at the center of the negotiations.
It is ironic that the anti-developmental nature of the WTO has become more evident under a so-called development round.
The Doha negotiations have become a struggle for developing countries against the aggressive and ambitious agenda to open new markets for agricultural and industrial goods and the fast track liberalization of the services sector.
A recent statement made by Susan Schwab, United States Trade Representative underscores the real objectives of the round.
Speaking days after the collapse of Ministerial level talks in Geneva, Schwab insisted that “the only Doha deal the U.S. will accept is an ambitious one”.
As if on cue, Peter Mandelson the European Trade Commissioner stated a few days later that “the EU must pursue an aggressive agenda to open foreign markets to its goods and services even if the current round of world trade liberalization talks is successful.”
More and more the burden of this ambitious liberalization agenda in terms of reduced tariff protections and higher tariff binding commitments is being shifted to developing countries while the benefits are skewed in favour of developed countries.
In agriculture, the new deal that’s shaping up would have developing countries absorb further tariff cuts.
For the Philippines, with an average bound rate for our agriculture products at a low 10 percent already and with an overwhelming majority of our tariff lines falling between 0-30 percent, the deal would reduce our average rate further to less than 7 percent.
On the other hand, the developed countries particularly the United States and the European Union would have the mandate still to continue their huge subsidy programs for their own farmers.
The much publicized proposals from the US and the EU for 60 % cuts in their farm subsidies are no more than ‘paper cuts’ that would not really redound to substantive reduction in their billion dollar domestic support to agriculture.
Furthermore, the demand made by the Philippines through the Group of 33 for special products and special safeguard mechanisms (SP/SSM), that aim to protect certain products which are vital to food security, livelihood and rural development, have continuously been challenged and watered down by developed countries who in tur
n want a special category of sensitive products for their own agriculture.
The area of special products and special safeguard mechanisms has become the foremost issue for the Philippines in the agriculture negotiations.
Our agriculture negotiators came back from the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting claiming a major gain on SP/SSM.
They were confident that we could push an SP coverage of at least 20 % of agricultural tariff lines.
This would translate to around 160 tariff lines that would be given some degree of cover from tariff reductions.
The recent developments in the agriculture negotiations however have effectively doused cold water on the Philippines hopes on SP/SSM.
The proposal of the United States to limit the SP coverage to a mere 5 tariff lines has pulled down considerably the numbers on SP.
Without a clear bottom line position on coverage, SP/SSM may no longer provide the much needed cover and flexibilities that the Philippines is hoping for.
In the negotiations on non-agricultural market access or NAMA, which deals with industrial and fishery sectors, developed countries are pushing for a very ambitious formula of tariff reduction and tariff bindings that is feared by many as closing the door to industrialization for developing countries.
In NAMA, the burden of tariff reduction would again be carried by developing countries with developed countries absorbing reduction rates or around 20-25 percent as against the 60-80 percent reduction rates for developing countries. For the Philippines,
aside from increasing our binding commitments to practically all products, a deal on NAMA would force us to peg our tariff rates on industrial and fishery products at their lowest ever.
These tariff reductions would have tremendous effects on particular sectors like automotive, textiles, cement, petrochemical, shoes and fisheries.
In services, even as the push for more offers from developing countries to various approaches seemed to have back fired, the aggressive liberalization agenda on services remains evident. The big debate right now in the GATS negotiations is over domestic regulation.
The proponents of services liberalization are pushing hard for the elimination of all barriers to liberalization and this includes challenging the right of countries to institute the necessary mechanisms and put in place policies that regulate the entry of foreign investments in the services sector.
The Doha round negotiations had become more and more exclusionary. The informal meetings among a few countries are overshadowing the formal processes in term of importance and influence.
From Mini-ministerial meetings to green room discussion, to meetings of the Group of 6 (G6) and Group of 8 (G8), major decisions are now being made by a select few and the majority of the Members are being left out and marginalized in what is supposed to be a Member-driven, bottom-up process.
That the decision to suspend the round in fact was an off shoot of the failure of the G6 countries to show movement in the critical areas is further proof of where the power in the WTO resides.
We have seen over the course of the negotiations more bullying and pressure tactics from the developed countries.
The proposals from the United States for instance regarding special products and special safeguard mechanisms and on domestic regulation have shown its capacity to effectively undermine the demands of developing countries for flexibilities and more policy space.
Since Hong Kong, the negotiations have largely become a Geneva-based process concentrated on the work done by the various committees in order to facilitate the forging of consensus on the so called modalities in agriculture and NAMA and the new offers in services.
