HONG KONG — Lots of protests and digging in of heels.
Those were the opening salvos of the World Trade Organization summit, which began here Tuesday, when almost 5,000 protesters took to the streets and the world’s less-developed nations stuck to their guns over greater market access for their agricultural products.
The events increased the already downbeat mood surrounding the trade talks, called the Doha Round. They also mirror the circumstances of the last round of global trade talks two years ago in Cancún, Mexico, which ended in a failure to reach an accord. At stake are policies that can make or break international market access for member countries in a wide range of products, including apparel and textiles. The talks have become a lightning rod for both proponents of free global trade and protectionists.
“If the WTO is to maintain and increase its current activities, then you must take a further step and commit yourselves to a new investment in the improvement of rules, through the success of current negotiations,” WTO director general Pascal Lamy said Tuesday during the inaugural ceremony.
In recognition of the challenges ahead, Lamy at one point admitted the 149-member WTO isn’t the most popular organization in the world.
His speech was interrupted shortly after he started when a group of about 30 protesters consisting of accredited representatives from nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, congregated toward the back of the hall and began chanting, “No more lies,” among other slogans.
The group, a global network called Our World Is Not for Sale that is made up of citizens’ movements and NGOs from 70 countries, also carried a banner and signs that stated: “No deal is better than a bad deal,” and “WTO kills farmers.”
There were more demonstrations later in the afternoon, when more than 300 fishermen took their protests to sea aboard two boats that made their way from across the harbor to Wanchai, where the WTO summit is taking place. Two protesters per boat jumped into the ocean, but quickly got back on the boats, one of which carried a banner stating, “Don’t mess with our rights.”
At Victoria Park, 4,500 protesters gathered and marched to the harbor, which is one of the designated protest areas within eyesight of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. There, more than 100 protesters wearing life jackets jumped into the sea.
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Inside the convention center, it was hard to imagine there were protests going on because on the surrounding streets there were only officials and police officers.
There were plenty of complaints inside the hall anyway, especially from less-developed countries. The group of 20 developing nations, led by Brazil and India, held its first formal meeting at a morning session. In a ministerial declaration, the group, which is constructed around agriculture, stated something that was repeated many times throughout the day by different representatives: “We must move in agriculture for other areas to move.”
Referring to cotton — which the U.S. has acknowledged is a key area for compromise — the declaration emphasized that the struggle of “African cotton-producing countries and other producers in the developing world is evidence of the distortions in agriculture that we are committed to eliminate.”
A representative from Brazil said later that the G20 supports the demands of the C4 —- made up of the African cotton-producing nations of Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad — but the U.S. has to deliver. They are demanding that wealthy countries do away with export subsidies on cotton by the end of this year.
The National Retail Federation and EuroCommerce submitted a joint statement in which they reiterated their support for better market access for consumer goods, including apparel, textiles, footwear and cotton, as well as better market access outside their home markets.
The groups also want to see changes in trade remedy laws that use antidumping and safeguards, which they say are strongly influenced by politics and protectionists.
“We need mass income all over Europe, but protectionism is not the right way to have a strong and vigorous industry,” said Peter Bernert, president of EuroCommerce. “Protectionism will harm the traders, harm the consumers.”
Erik Autor, vice president and international trade counsel for the NRF, said he was concerned with a trend that abuses the use of antidumping laws with little protection for consumers.
He said people are hard-pressed to find a single member of the U.S. Congress able to give a cogent definition of antidumping, although the lawmakers defend it. “These laws are in desperate need of reform,” he said. Ultimately, the result of trade protectionism is that consumers end up paying more for products, said Autor and Bernert.
In the U.S., 7 percent of all trade is related to apparel, textiles and footwear, Autor said, adding those three categories account for half of all duties collected by U.S. Customs. “Tariffs are essentially hidden sales taxes,” he said.
And those costs fall most heavily on poor families because tariffs are primarily applied on cheaper products that are produced in poor countries, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, he added. “We have a great opportunity here to address a whole range of issues” that will benefit industries, consumers and global economies, Autor said.
The first informal meeting with a negotiation facilitator took place in the afternoon after the opening ceremony. The topic was market access for industrial goods, and it was moderated by Humayun Akhtar Khan, Pakistan’s Minister of Commerce. Khan encouraged members to not restate well-known positions at the large meetings. He suggested concentrating negotiations within small group meetings or conducting consultations with individual delegations and himself. “If we don’t make progress this week, we leave ourselves a monumental task next year,” he said.
Negotiators hope to wrap up the trade round by the end of next year, enabling President Bush to send an agreement to the U.S. Congress before his trade promotion authority, which permits an up or down vote on trade agreements, expires July 1, 2007.