BREAKING OUT OF THE MOULD
Reflections on the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong by TIP/IATP
I. WHAT HAPPENED IN HONG KONG?
The 6th WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Hong Kong 13-18 December 2005, ended with an agreed Ministerial Declaration. WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, and a number of WTO members celebrated the moment as an important step towards the completion of the Doha Round of trade negotiations. Expectations had steadily been ratcheted down before the conference and there were few surprises in the final outcome.
Developing countries, despite their different interests, displayed impressive solidarity and collaboration when they stood together at a press conference during the Ministerial meeting and let the world know that they wanted to work together to redress the inequalities in the trading system. This collaboration of developing countries was successful in resisting some demands from the developed countries and certainly contributes to a gradual but evident shift in the power balance that dominates trade negotiations. Developing countries were able to tweak some elements of the Draft Ministerial Declaration that was sent to Hong Kong to better reflect some of their offensive and defensive interests. For example, the final Ministerial Declaration contains an end date for agricultural export subsidies (finally!), calls for further disciplines on food aid programs (that if accepted would particularly affect the U.S., which provides roughly 60 percent of global food aid resources), improved language on Special Products (SPs) and the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM), and weakened somewhat the attempt by a small number of countries to push the services negotiations into a more one-size-fits all approach through amendments to annex C of the declaration.
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