Peter Gallagher

A ‘sashay‘ is a fig­ure in square-dancing in which part­ners cir­cle each other by tak­ing side­ways steps, accord­ing to the dic­tio­nary. It’s a basic move in trade nego­ti­a­tions, too. When an issue such as mar­ket access reaches the point it has, today, where the next move becomes “I win, you loose”, the nego­ti­a­tions can sieze-up like a motor with­out oil. The time has arrived to sashay around to other issues

The G-20 group of devel­op­ing coun­tries, the USA, the Cairns Group and oth­ers are telling the EC to move beyond it’s aver­age 25 per­cent cut in agri­cul­tural trade bar­ri­ers, and the EC is say­ing it cannot.

“… EU offi­cials said the min­i­mum demanded by the US and the Group of 20 devel­op­ing coun­tries, which includes India and Brazil, was more than they could offer. The G20 is call­ing for the rich coun­tries to cut farm tar­iffs by an aver­age of 54 per cent, against the ini­tial EU offer which the US cal­cu­lates as an aver­age reduc­tion of 25 per cent. The US pro­posal envis­ages an aver­age 75 per cent cut.”(Finan­cial Times)

The nego­ti­a­tions at this point take on the aspect of a zero-sum game. What­ever advance one side secures rep­re­sents a pro­por­tional loss to the other side. Trade itself is not like that: it’s a positive-sum exchange in which both play­ers win.

It may be time for the nego­tia­tors to re-discover that pos­i­tive sum by turn­ing to other issues affect­ing the out­come in Agri­cul­ture such as:

1. ‘Spe­cial prod­ucts’ that devel­op­ing coun­tries may des­ig­nate for higher protection

2. Spe­cial ‘safe­guards’ for agri­cul­tural prod­ucts when imports sud­denly start to take away the mar­ket; are they needed?
3. The terms of imple­men­ta­tion for the elim­i­na­tion of export sub­si­dies; how long? By iden­ti­cal steps? “Back-end-loaded”? With year-to-year variations?
4. Geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tions; should a global ‘reg­is­ter’ of GI’s be estab­lished? Will it have legal effect in all WTO mem­ber coun­tries? What effect?
5. How can sub­stan­tial food-aid dona­tions best be man­aged with­out endan­ger­ing the rules against sub­si­dized sur­plus dis­pos­als affect­ing com­mer­cial sales?
6. Can the def­i­n­i­tion of the ‘green box’—subsidies to farm­ers that are not trade distorting—be improved?

When progress is made in some of these areas—that have been dis­cussed now for three years—it should be pos­si­ble to sashay back to the issue of mar­ket access bar­rier cuts, and see the num­bers in a dif­fer­ent light.