The economic powerhouses of the world are still hoping to revive the DOHA round of WTO trade negotiations. I hope if these negotiations do resume that our Caricom negotiators will remember clearly what is at stake. I think it was Ambassador Richard Bernal, Director-General of the Regional Negotiating Machinery, who once said about these negotiations, “No deal is better than a bad deal” for small and vulnerable countries like ours. Yes indeed.
The fact is that in all the multitudinous negotiating sessions which have taken place over the years, no specific, actual, bankable concessions were ever made to meet the needs of small, vulnerable developing countries like ours. I do not mean the rhetorical, generalized, theoretical expression of promises “to take our needs fully into account” which we have become accustomed to hearing at international conferences, but which so easily disappear like froth when final deals are done.
At the original DOHA conference seven years ago, small developing countries achieved a measure of theoretical success. Recall, for instance, some of the fine sentiments recorded:
– The urgent need to give substance to measures
favourable to developing countries previously
agreed, but up to then not implemented, was
declared a priority in what was then the new DOHA
round.
– The DOHA Declaration specifically recognized
“the particular vulnerability of least developed
countries and the special structural difficulties they
face in the global economy.”
– The DOHA Declaration clearly recognized the
importance of non-trade concerns. This meant that
agriculture in countries like ours and in Europe
(where our special arrangements for sugar used to
be an integral part of the regime), could continue to
meet the non-free trade needs of societies in respect
of food security, countryside environment and the
stability of rural areas.
– The WTO granted a waiver from its non-discrimi-
nation obligations to the EU-ACP Cotonou
Agreement. This agreement, among other things,
recognized the special legal status of the Sugar
Protocol and guaranteed the continuation of its ben
efits.
So what progress was ever made in putting flesh on these fine aspirations? None that are at all obvious. Indeed Caricom is worse off because the Cotonou Agreement is being abandoned by the European Union in favour of regional Economic Partnership Agreements, and in these the benefits of the Sugar Protocol are unilaterally denounced by the EU and will be replaced by arrangements for sugar which inevitably will be much less advantageous to us, involving as they will do a price which is hugely reduced by 36 per cent compared with what we used to receive. It is not at all clear what benefits in other areas will be won to make up for this sort of disastrous anti-benefit.
In WTO negotiations there has never been any real ‘bird-in-the-hand’ weight given to the concept of “special and differential treatment” for small developing countries. The powerhouses continue to assume that world trading arrangements must take place on a level playing field for all. But that is fundamentally unjust and therefore ultimately unworkable. Unless “special and differential treatment” for small, poor and vulnerable countries is systematically applied in negotiating and implementing world trading arrangements the playing field will never be balanced and just. Consider just four of the many inherent disadvantages from which small, undiversified economies suffer.
– Developed, diversified economies are naturally bet
ter positioned to benefit from free trade compared
with poor countries dependent on a few industries;
if one or two businesses fail it hardly matters among
so many, but in poor countries it can be a mortal
blow.
– Subsidies, many of them subtly hidden, continue to
support businesses and whole industries in rich coun-
tries which hypocritically proclaim the need for
free trade and pure market forces.
– Developed countries are past masters at imposing
non-tariff barriers – rigid quality standards, intricate
bureaucratic requirements, new security regulations
– whilst insisting that trade with them is tariff free
and so requires reciprocity. Our hypocrisy cannot
match theirs.
– Strong, advanced economies – possessing science
and technology developed to the sharpest cutting
edge of modern methods in all the disciplines which
business needs – must have their tongues firmly and
cynically in their cheeks when they advocate recip-
rocal free trade for weak, backward, skills-deprived
economies which cannot possibly equal their tech-
nological firepower.
Unbridled free trade is a recipe by developed countries for marginalizing small, poor countries in a global economy where, naturally, the strong will prevail and the weak will go to the wall – and remember that countries like China, India and Brazil are well on the way to being ‘developed’ in this sense. The bridle which free trade requires is “special and differential treatment” for the poor and the small and the vulnerable. But will the bridle ever be put firmly in place in the coming months and years?
In the DOHA round negotiations, a number of “principles” good for us in Caricom were won, eg special and differential treatment for small and vulnerable countries, allowance made for the serious impact of preference erosion, special treatment for sensitive products, long transitional periods for tariff reductions to avoid disaster in vulnerable economies. And, remember, the negotiations were named the DOHA Development Round.
If these negotiations resume the challenge will remain the same – to realize in clauses that bite the mere lip service paid so far to principles like these. Regrettably, experience tells us that at crunch time the powers that be completely ignore principle in favour of their own bottom lines.
