Heads of state from 21 Pacific Rim countries region have said they are willing to offer fresh concessions to break the deadlock in the Doha Round trade talks -- so long as governments "in other regions" do the same. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Hanoi from 18-19 November, the leaders called for the troubled negotiations to "resume without further delay."

"Each of us is committed to moving beyond our current positions in key areas of the round," they declared in an 18 November statement on the WTO negotiations. "That means making deeper reductions in trade-distorting farm support by major players, creating new market access in agriculture, making real cuts in industrial tariffs, and establishing new openings in services trade, while dealing seriously with Members' concerns and sensitivities." The leaders called upon their "partners in other regions to be similarly bold and engaged."

The statement was framed in somewhat stronger language than the dozens of similar declarations of support issued by international gatherings in recent years. However, the APEC leaders did not announce any specific new figures for tariff and subsidy reduction.

Suspended since late July over differences on farm subsidy and tariff cuts, the WTO negotiations have been showing signs of stirring. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy on 16 November gave Geneva-based trade diplomats the green light to start informal discussions on all issues in the Doha Round talks. However, he said that "fully-fledged negotiations" would only begin "when Members are ready to put numbers to the flexibilities they have already expressed in general terms on key issues, in particular on agriculture and domestic support."

While the APEC summit was underway in Hanoi, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson made a speech in New Delhi in which he also called on WTO Members, especially the US, to take the steps necessary to bring the round to conclusion. Although he mentioned the additional farm tariff cuts that Brussels had hinted at before the talks were suspended, he too refrained from putting forward any specific numbers that would spell out precisely what was now on offer.

The EU and India, along with Brazil, are among the world's few major economies that do not belong to APEC, whose members for close to 60 percent of the world's economy and 50 percent of its trade.

APEC puts Pacific Rim FTA on backburner

In Hanoi, APEC heads of state said that the Doha Round remained "a top priority." They effectively put a proposal to turn APEC into a mammoth free trade area on the backburner, acknowledging an assessment by a group of regional business leaders that there would be "practical difficulties in negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) at this time." Instead, they instructed officials to examine potential for regional economic integration, including an FTAAP "as a long-term prospect," and report to next year's summit in Australia.

The APEC Business Advisory Council's report to the summit, which mirrored much of the leaders' eventual declaration, also said the "plethora" of bilateral and regional trade agreements in the region "presents businesses with additional costs and administrative burdens." It urged a primary focus on the Doha Round, arguing that "multilateral trade negotiations have historically proved to be the most effective way to stimulate trade and thus world economic growth." However, the group did recommend that APEC should continue work on developing a template for WTO-plus FTAs. It suggested that similar accords would be easier to consolidate -- potentially into an FTAAP -- in the event that the multilateral talks ultimately fail.

APEC also announced a series of measures to promote trade facilitation, investment liberalisation, and intellectual property rights protection in the region.

Another call for the resumption and successful conclusion of the Doha Round talks came from the 'other' G-20. This group of finance ministers and central bank governors from leading industrialised and developing countries -- not to be confused with the developing country alliance in the WTO agriculture negotiations -- met in Melbourne on 18-19 November.

Trade officials talking, but little new to discuss

US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns went to India from 18-22 November to meet with his counterparts there. In a speech to a business audience in New Delhi on 21 November, he urged India to offer greater access to its agricultural markets. In particular, he said that 'the three S's' -- special products, sensitive products, and the special safeguard mechanism -- should not be used to shield many tariff lines from liberalisation.

Johanns said it was excessive to seek to shield 20 percent of tariff lines from the full force of the reduction formula, as India and other members of the G-33 bloc of countries have been. He said that India's own proposed cuts would force the duties levied on only 14 percent of tariff lines to below their currently applied level. However, Washington has thus far sought overall tariff cuts deeper than those proposed by India's G-20 group.

Indian officials maintained that they would reject any deal that threatened to compromise the livelihoods of the country's hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers. Johanns told Reuters after his visit that he gained had a better understanding of the Indian government's position, but that the market access flexibilities remained Washington's "big hang up."

Notably, Johanns did not mention the possibility of further farm subsidy cuts by the US in his New Delhi speech, simply expressing "sincere hope that [Washington's] ambitious offer tabled about a year ago will be matched."

Several WTO Members believe that the US needs to accept deeper cuts to its agricultural subsidies as part of a Doha Round deal. In his own speech in New Delhi three days earlier, Mandelson said that the "rest of the world" was asking the US to make "a real terms cut of a few billion dollars in trade-distorting farm subsidy payments to farmers who are not near the breadline." He argued that in light of US farm spending and the potential gains from the round, "the reduction being sought is bearable."

In Montevideo to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the Uruguay Round negotiations that gave rise to the WTO, Lamy on 22 November reiterated his view that the subsidy and tariff cuts already on offer in the Doha talks far exceed the value of those obtained in the earlier round. He called on governments to show the "political leadership, commitment and goodwill" necessary to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion.

ICTSD reporting; "U.S. pushes India on farm trade, no Doha breakthrough," REUTERS, 22 February 2006; "APEC leaders say 'urgent need' to break trade deadlock," AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 18 November 2006.