BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest

Lead Stories
WTO MEMBERS REACH 'MOMENT OF TRUTH' ON SENSITIVE FARM PRODUCTS	A handful of key agricultural exporters and importers have reached an outline agreement on expanding trade in 'sensitive' farm products as part of the Doha Round global trade talks. The six co-sponsors of the new approach - Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, the EU and the US - shared their proposed compromise with other WTO Members on 4 April, along with data revealing the likely extent of new market access under the approach.
US DEMOCRATS VOTE TO INDEFINITELY SUSPEND ACTION ON COLOMBIA FTA	Earlier this week, the Bush administration took a gamble: it sent a free trade agreement with Colombia to the US House of Representatives for consideration, in the face of objections from the leaders of the Democratic majority. The administration was betting that if it forced a vote, enough rank-and-file Democrats would support the agreement to secure its passage. Alternatively, they would vote against the deal, opening the party to accusations of betraying one of the US' few staunch allies in the region.
CLIMATE TALKS IN BANGKOK SEE COMPETITIVENESS CONCERNS RAISED	Five days of contentious climate change talks in Bangkok concluded last week with an agreement on a timetable for negotiations that are supposed to culminate in a new United Nations accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2009.

In Brief	WTO in Brief
	EU Loses on Bananas Again, This Time to Ecuador

Events        &        Resources
Events	14 April, New York, New York, USA. SPECIAL HIGH LEVEL MEETING OF THE UN ECOSOC WITH THE WORLD BANK, IMF, WTO AND UNCTAD. The overall theme of the meeting will be "Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, including new challenges and emerging issues". The meeting will substantively cover the following sub-themes:New initiatives on financing for development; Supporting development efforts and enhancing the role of middle-income countries, including in the area of trade; Supporting development efforts of the least developed countries, including through trade capacity-building; Building and sustaining solid financial markets: challenges for international cooperation; Financing of climate change mitigation and adaptation. For more information please refer to the conference website at http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ecosoc/springmeetings/2008/index.htm.
Resources	THE HARMONIZED SYSTEM: AMENDMENTS AND THEIR IMPACTS ON WTO MEMBERS' SCHEDULES. By Dayong Yu. World Trade Organization, 2008. As an internationally standardized product nomenclature, the Harmonized System (HS) is used by WTO Members in their schedules of concessions and in the definitions of product coverage for a number of WTO agreements. The Harmonized System is normally amended by the World Customs Organization every four to six years. These amendments pose considerable challenges for the WTO and its Members. On the one hand, Members need to periodically update their historical schedules of concessions into the latest nomenclature. On the other hand, these amendments may have implications for the definition and thus also the implementation of some WTO agreements where the product coverage is defined in terms of the HS. In either case, the product codes and/or descriptions in the old HS version need to be transposed precisely into those in the new version of HS nomenclature in order to retain the historical concessions or the product coverage unchanged. Given the complexity of HS amendments, this process could be very technical and sometimes tricky. The paper is available online at http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd200802_e.htm.
BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest is made possible through the generous support of the Government of the United Kingdom (DFID) and ICTSD's core donors including the Governments of Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden; Christian Aid (UK) and NOVIB (NL). BRIDGES Weekly also benefits from support for the BRIDGES series of publications from donors including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.