Reuters/Geneva
The disagreements keeping trading nations from a deal to promote global free trade remain “unbridgeable today”, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy said yesterday.Lamy’s statement came as the WTO published hundreds of pages of legal texts outlining the state of play in the Doha Round of world trade talks that began a decade ago.The move was an abortive attempt to restart the process.Doha is now at “serious risk of failure”, Lamy said, repeating a warning he has given many times in recent months.Lamy said the documents “will leave no-one in any doubt about the value of what is on the table” – a reference to the belief liberalising trade can promote economic growth for all countries.Members should “use the coming weeks to talk to each other and build bridges,” he said.But he warned: “I believe we are confronted with a clear political gap which, as things stand .... is not bridgeable today”.As expected, the continuing and widely flagged stalemate centres on differences over tariffs on industrial goods – a key part of the non-agricultural goods or “NAMA” section of the discussions, whose aim is to nurture trade by reducing tariffs, subsidies, quotas and other barriers to it.Some countries, among them the US, want to see much bigger concessions on industrial tariffs by developing countries like China, Brazil and India than they are willing to concede, arguing in many areas they no longer need special treatment.The US is on the other side of the debate in agriculture, where others believe the world’s largest importer of goods should do more to open its large market for farm produce.Washington has been defending its position in recent weeks but had little to say yesterday.“We remain committed to finding a productive path forward in the Doha negotiations, and believe that these new documents will help members look at the complete picture of where things stand,” said US Trade Representative Ron Kirk in a statement.Lamy had hoped by forcing through the publication of yesterday’s state-of-play documents and legal texts he would kickstart progress on the talks, stalled on the same issues since the last push for progress in 2008.He has been acknowledging for weeks now a deal this year is now unlikely.Free trade is widely seen by economists as a force for good that promotes economic growth and pushes producers to focus on their strongest suit – favouring even the weakest as a result.But this is a view contested strongly by some organisations, which mistrust the motives of the big private corporations whose lobbying for market access sits behind the political progress.“The Doha Round, and the corporate globalisation model of the WTO itself, offers no solution to the global employment, food, and financial crises,” said a statement from the “Our World Is Not For Sale” network, a collection of anti-globalisation groups.“In fact, the rules embodied within the WTO itself actually help set the stage for these types of crises”.Pushing into the void where the Doha agreement could be are an increasing number of bilateral trade agreements. Some see these as the future of free trade, but others fear they could hurt the weakest countries.Much progress has been made in some areas of the talks, and some negotiators wonder whether these should be allowed to progress without the stalled NAMA part.Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) is one such area, where negotiators have hammered out plans to oil the wheels of customs clearance, improve port efficiency and standardise regulations for things like food hygiene regulations. Blanket exemption from quotas and tariffs for the poorest countries is another goal where there is broad agreement. The WTO’s members are due to meet to discuss the next steps for Doha on April 29.