Brazil’s Ag Trade Plan Stalls

Brazil’s much-publicized proposal on to move forward the long-stalled World Trade Organization agriculture negotiations appears to be another casualty of WTO members’ inability to find consensus, said people familiar with the developments.

Brazil appears to have pulled out all the stops trying to secure support from key countries like the United States, the European Union, China and farm offensive and defensive countries, in an effort to ensure its passage at the WTO’s General Council meeting earlier this week.

Even WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala appears to have campaigned for the Brazilian proposal, sometimes overtly and other times behind the scenes, said several trade envoys who asked not to be quoted.

At the GC meeting on July 22, the DG appears to have made a long statement about the Brazilian proposal and how it aims to take the farm trade negotiations forward, said people familiar with the discussions.

Before the meeting, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala tried to broker a compromise between Brazil and African Group members in green room meetings, several trade envoys told WTD on the condition of anonymity.

But her efforts were not able to overcome developing countries opposition to the Brazilian proposal.

Before the GC meeting, the DG thanked members for finding a way through “including the Brazil-led process, the African Group contribution, Brazil's discussions with the African Group, the technical work that the Cairns Group and African Group are undertaking. I consider these as contributions towards making a breakthrough,” according to the restricted document Job/TNC/123.

Supporters Speak

Following the positive statements made by the DG in favor of the Brazilian proposal at the GC meeting, several countries intervened to extend support to the proposal.

The countries said to have openly supported the Brazilian proposal at the GC meeting included. Ukraine, Guyana, Peru, Trinidad & Tobago, El Salvador, United Kingdom, United States, Guatemala, Switzerland, Japan, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, China, Uruguay, Chile, the European Union, Israel, Cameroon, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and South Korea, among others, said people who asked not to be identified.

It appeared as though Brazil had built a new alliance of countries that comprised rank farm protectionist countries on the one side, and aggressively farm liberalization countries like Paraguay and Australia, said people familiar with the discussions.

But with varying levels of emphasis, several developing countries said “No” to the Brazilian proposal, said people familiar with the discussions.

The countries that rejected the Brazilian proposal included: Russia, India, Indonesia, Djibouti (a least-developed country), Samoa, Nigeria, Chad (African Group coordinator), South Africa, Mauritius, Mozambique, Malaysia, Cambodia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Kenya and Namibia among others.

Indonesia’s trade envoy, Ambassador Dandy Iswara, said that while it “respects Brazil’s right to convene informal consultations to deliberate on its proposal, the discussion should be eventually be brought to CoASS (Committee on Agriculture Special Session) where members have more equal standing in the negotiations.”

Demands from Opponents

Ambassador Iswara said, “unfortunately, our concern has been dismissed as irrelevant or even mischaracterized as an excuse to prevent the negotiations from advancing.”

He outlined the following demands for advancing farm trade negotiations:

1. Developing countries must be provided with a policy space to meet their food security objectives and support their low-income and resource-poor farmers;
2. Special and differential treatment must be preserved, as an integral part of the negotiations;
3. Long standing ministerial mandates must be respected, including the urgent need to comply with an agreement on the permanent solution for public stock holding programs for food security;
4. The Brazilian proposal does not ask for the same levels concessions from members and does not have a concrete deliverable on PSH and SSM (special safeguard measures for developing countries) and
5.  Indonesia objected to “restructuring of negotiating mandates at the expense of longstanding

Ministerial mandates that would deepen trust-deficit among members.”
India said it opposes the Brazilian proposal both on procedural and substantive as well as systemic grounds, said people familiar with the Indian statement.

In the run-up to the GC meeting, the Brazilian proposal reportedly faced rough weather during the informal discussions when several countries like India, Indonesia on behalf of the G-33 group of countries, and many African Countries, including South Africa, among others criticized the Brazilian proposal as well as for embarking on informal negotiations outside the established Doha agricultural negotiating body, said people familiar with the discussions.

The Brazilian proposal sought substantial changes in the draft ministerial text on agriculture, which provided a hierarchy of options in which a decision on the permanent solution for public stockholding programs was supposed to be concluded at the WTO’s 13th ministerial conference that concluded earlier this year. MC13, however, collapsed because of disagreement on the much-delayed permanent solution for PSH programs since WTO’s 10th ministerial meeting in December 2015.

While the Brazilian proposal said that “members instruct the CoAwt-SS Chairperson to conduct negotiations on PSH, SSM and cotton in line with the mandates of the Nairobi Ministerial Decision and in dedicated sessions of the CoA-SS,” it proposed that “the General Council and the TNC shall regularly review progress in the negotiation.”