I first came across this news on the IHT website. I was mildly surprised to see the article written from a U.S. perspective. Compare this with the EU perspective of the same situation. The IHT tries to blame India, China and Lamy, acknowledging that the US negotiators failed to reach an agreement. Mandelson places most of the blame on the US.
IHT writes
Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, could not bridge differences between a group of newly confident developing nations and established Western economic powers.
Reuters quotes EU trade chief Mandelson
…the United States helped to bring down global trade talks this week when its negotiators shunned a compromise proposal at a key juncture in the talks.
“…when WTO chief (Pascal) Lamy reconvenes the Group of Seven negotiators at midday, the Indians and the Chinese express reservations and the U.S. rejects the proposal outright, much to Lamy’s understandable frustration”.
IHT writes
He said the sticking point this time was countries like China and India, which have become more aggressive in advancing their interests. “Maybe they’re now thinking, ‘We’re big enough that we don’t even need the process,’ ” Macrae said.
Mandelson says:
a U.S. official “simply does not show up” when negotiations resume and U.S. trade chief Susan Schwab, heading into the finale of the negotiations, stopped off in the press room “to get her rebuttal in first,”
“It is bad enough to be facing defeat in the last mile of such a marathon. It’s worse to realise that some of the people across the table, instead of working for success, are in reality preparing for failure.”
You never know when the media presents you with biases cloaked in news articles. The title of the IHT story in their RSS feed was “Trade talks broke down after Chinese shift on food”.
The heart of the dispute is, of course, that the US wants developing countries to “open up” their markets. Developing countries believe they need provisions to allow them to erect temporary barriers to foreign food products in the event of import surges. With a significant amount of subsistence farmers in India and China, a large number of whom are forced to commit suicide when the going gets tough, can you blame developing countries for wanting this provision? The United States and EU countries offer vast subsidies to their farmers. To be fair, the negotiations are around the developed countries reducing their farm subsidies in exchange for better access to developing nations’ markets.
The U.S. seems to be demanding a “dollar-for-dollar” approach in this negotiation. According to Mandelson,
Washington’s demand that its farmers get new market access in return for less subsidies had hindered the Doha round, launched in 2001 to help poor countries develop, especially in agriculture.
“The dollar-for-dollar approach does not add up in any way,” Mandelson said. “Yes, there has to be balance, yes there has to be reciprocity, but in a development round a dollar-for-dollar approach is never going to stack up.”
After decades of an uneven playing field following centuries of colonial imperialism, I’ve got to agree with Mandelson. The “dollar-for-dollar” approach does not make sense.