US, India don’t agree on key issues, WTO talks collapse

WTO members failed to make headway after four days of discussions as the US and India stuck to their widely differing stand on almost all issues, raising fresh uncertainty over changing global trade rules for developing and poor countries.

Talks were on the brink since Tuesday when the US refused to support a solution on public stockholding of food grains — an issue on which a decision had be delivered here. This was being aggressively pursued by the government as it wants the debate to be settled, despite a decision that no one will face litigation even if a country's spending on food procurement, through schemes such as minimum support price, exceeds 10% of the value of production.

On Wednesday morning, the Americans virtually put the final nail in the coffin by blocking any dialogue on agriculture reforms, including a change in trade-distorting subsidies doled out to farmers in developed countries. While the rich countries refused to play ball on farm talks, they started pushing for a more intense dialogue on having global rules for e-commerce, something that countries such as India and South African were unwilling to agree to.

In a face-saving exercise, the Argentinian organisers as well as the WTO secretariat tried to put together a draft declaration but India turned it down, saying its concerns were not factored in. By Wednesday evening, when the biennial ministerial meeting ended, members had made no real gains, although everyone claimed to have pushed their case.

While the Indian delegation acknowledged that a solution could not be found to its aggressive interests on food security, it claimed victory in blocking strong attempts by developed countries, as well as China and Singapore, to step up talks for a global framework on e-commerce.

"The big achievement was that everyone held firm and the coalition was intact," said an official. Others such as the US and the European Union suggested that the meeting had shown how there was greater appetite for newer issues, such as investment facilitation and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), even as more complex subjects such as a link between trade and gender were pursued by some of the so-called independent think tanks.

Indian officials now expect to return to WTO headquarters in Geneva to push their cases in several areas.

(TOI)