Ian On Sunday

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.