Agricultural Selfishness
    Le Monde | Editorial

    Tuesday 25 July 2007

    The Doha cycle of trade liberalization was launched in November 2001 in Qatar's capital with the objective of supporting the development of the least developed countries by facilitating their access to global trade. The negotiators were supposed to try to liberalize agricultural markets further. It was a question of allowing farmers from the south to find outlets in the markets of industrialized nations through the northern countries' reduction of subsidies paid to their competitors and lifting of customs barriers.

    After five years of laborious secret negotiations between the 149 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), this objective is doubly compromised by the sine die suspension of negotiations, decided Monday 24 July in Geneva.

    In the absence of an ultimate rebound - difficult to imagine in the coming months - the cycle's failure will deprive developing countries of the progress wrested in the course of the WTO meetings. To the great displeasure of non-governmental organizations, rich countries - following the example of the United States, as well as France within the European Union - fought tooth and nail to limit agricultural concessions. WTO Director Pascal Lamy deems that what was put on the table was attractive. Never had a trade cycle gone so far in agricultural matters before ... suddenly coming to an end, as though frightened by the scope of the contemplated concessions.

    Even more serious: Behind this failure there looms the scapegoating of multilateral trade. Unable to deliver an agreement, the WTO risks incurring the costs of these divergences between members. Now the Geneva institution is the only one to try to settle the disequilibria of global trade that doesn't need it to experience lively expansion under the impulsion of emerging countries, such as India, China, and Brazil. After five years of vain negotiations, this result is all the more regrettable in that it is the traditional supports for multilateralism since the last World War - the United States and Europe - who are largely responsible for this situation.

    In the absence of a WTO compromise, the principal powers of the planet have already launched - or are on the point of so doing - bilateral negotiations with the countries or regions they want to privilege: Asian ones for both the Americans and the Europeans. Some parts of the world, like Africa, risk being, once again, forsaken.

    Above all, trade experts unanimously consider that such a strategy goes against the interests of the poorest countries, which have neither the means to increase bilateral exercises, nor sufficient power to resist the demands of developed countries.