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What Next for Asia and the WTO? by Walden Bello
(The Far Eastern Economic Review, for which the author is a columnist, sent a number of questions to him following the collapse of the WTO talks in Seattle. We are reproducing his answers in full.)
FEER: are Asia's trade-dominated economies hurt by the disarray in the global trading system and the failure in Seattle to get a new round of trade talks off the ground?
Bello: I don't think so. Negotiations on agriculture and services were already mandated under the 1994 Marrakesh accord to begin in 2000, so you did not need a new round to launch these talks. So negotiations on this limi ted agenda will resume in Geneva. I think with or without a new round, the main problem in agriculture is the same: the refusal of the European Union to eliminate high levels of export subsidies and direct income support for its farming interests. This will not change in the coming months. Unless the EU compromises, you will have the same stand-off in agriculture that Contributed to the collapse of negotiations in Seattle.
The additional agenda items that the EU and us wanted to bring in for the new round were things that the Asian countries were distinctly unenthusiastic about: investment policy, competition policy, transparency in governm ent procurement, industrial tariffs, and trade and labour and trade and environment linkages. They see this as dangerous efforts to reshape their economies along aAnglo-saxon free market lines to facilitate their penetrat ion by northern transnationals.
Together with most other developing countries, the ASEAN governments did not want a new round of liberalisation but wanted negotiations to focus on implementation issues relating to their commitments under the Uruguay rou nd, since many have been encountering difficulties, and on having an impact assessment of the Uruguay round in terms of costs and benefits. Many, like the ASEAN countries, wanted as well, before another round of negotiati ons, a stronger commitment from the EU and us to the concept of 'special and differential treatment' of developing countries, which would allow them to take tariff-freezing or tariff-raising or import-limiting measures to allow a less destabilising integration of their economies into the global economy.
Finally, the idea of a 'development round' did not come from the Asian countries or other developing countries but from the British government. And not even the EU had a consensus on this. The reason the Asian governments and other developing country governments were apprehensive of this idea was that it was widely known that the EU's interest in a more comprehensive round of talks was to allow them to trade off concessions in other secto rs for maintaining their high subsidies in agriculture, or to make their concessions in agriculture politically palatable by getting concessions from others in other areas. The development round idea was floated very late in the game, and many governments saw it as a cynical ploy on the part of the EU to get the developing countries to support their agenda.
FEER: Is the fact that the Europe and US failed to interject labour and environmental issues into trade talks a victory for Asian developing countries?
Bello: I think that they see it as a victory against protectionism masking as human rights and environmental concern. On this issue, it is important to point out that governments and most NGOs in Asia have the same positi on. For the NGOs, the fear of disguised protectionism is accompanied by a sense that the question of wage rates and child labour is a complex issue that must be handled with great care. The sense is that giving the WTO ju risdiction over trade and environment and trade and labour issues is giving authority to a body that has no expertise in them. The appropriate institutions are the international labour organisation for trade-labour issues and the multilateral environmental agreements for trade-environment issues. The task is to give these expert bodies real enforcement capabilities.
FEER: What would developing Asia like to see happen in Geneva, where talks on a new round of negotiations are expected to restart soon. Bello: I think the main concerns remain the same; that the EU and us agree to bring d own their high levels of subsidies for agriculture without demanding reciprocal concessions from the developing countries; that negotiations focus on the built-in agenda, that is implementation issues related to the Urugu ay round; and that negotiations address the question of democracy and transparency of decision-making, which is one of the main factors that torpedoed the Seattle talks. But really, the WTO is in severe disarray. I doubt very much if a new round can be launched soon, since you need the ministerial and a consensus declaration at the ministerial to launch one- -which means a wait for another year and a half, unless of course, the big powers can convince the other countries to advance the ministerial.
All in all, Asia, along with the larger developing world, is benefited rather than disadvantaged by the collapse of WTO ministerial.