Australian Govt will adhere to WTO apple ruling
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has given what appears to be an unequivocable assurance that her Government will not try to get around the World Trade Organisation decision on apple imports.
A WTO disputes panel ruling last year upheld New Zealand’s complaint about the stringent quarantine restrictions that Australia was proposing, after lifting its 90-year ban on apples from this country.
The New Zealand case also survived an appeal from Australia.
Julia Gillard said in Wellington on Wednesday that Australia accepts the decision.
She says in a rules-based trading system it would be expected that appeal rights would be used but the “umpire has now spoken” and Australia will abide by the ruling.
Pipfruit New Zealand chief executive Peter Beaven says it is heartening to get that sort of public assurance from Ms Gillard.
The New Zealand apple industry is hoping it can start exporting fruit to Australia from next year.
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Doha trade talks on home stretch
Doha trade talks on home stretch
Florence Chong From: The Australian
IN 2001, members of the World Trade Organisation met in Doha, Qatar, to begin a new round of negotiations to further open global trade.
This followed a false start to negotiations in 1999.
China also joined the WTO in 2001, on the cusp of a decade of rapid expansion in world trade that totalled $US13.3 trillion ($13.5 trillion) in merchandise goods last year.
What became known as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) started awkwardly under then WTO director-general Mike Moore, who ambitiously hoped to conclude the round by January 2005.
Ten years later, and having been revived twice after collapsing under a mountain of disagreements, the round continues to limp along under the guidance of singleminded Director-General Pascal Lamy, who is resolutely determined to extract an agreement from the WTO’s 153 members.
Lamy, a former European Union trade commissioner and French political adviser who succeeded Supachai Panitchpakdi in 2005, told The Australian in Sydney that the leaders of the G20 agreed in Seoul in October that 2011 presented “a window of opportunity” to conclude the round. “I have been saying since July 2008 that 80 per cent of the deal is already on the table. The question is how to get the remaining 20 per cent done,” Mr Lamy said.
This is up to the US, China, India and Brazil, who must resolve their differences to close the gap. “The US wants the emerging countries to pay a bit more than what is on the table in a number of areas. China, Brazil and India are saying maybe (we can do more), but we also need to see the price that the US is willing to pay for that,” he said.
Intensive negotiations to bridge the final gap started in September and hopefully in the next few months, it will be possible to draw up a new global trade agreement. Other trade developments this year, such as the 10th anniversary of China’s accession, and the entry this year of Russia into the WTO, may act as an impetus to wind up the decade-long, sometimes fractious Doha negotiations.
Developing countries are two to four times more dependent on trade than the US and the European Union. Mr Lamy is not surprised that Doha should take longer than the previous Uruguay Round, which took eight years to complete in 1994.
He said WTO membership was much larger today, and negotiations had lengthened commensurate with the rise in the number of members. He said the first round in the 1950s, involving four or five negotiators, took a couple of years to complete.
The growing interdependence of trade has made the issues more complex, as emphasis shifts from simple tariff reductions to non-tariff barriers and new problems such as fishery subsidies.
“If tariffs are 100 per cent, then non-tariff barriers do not matter. But if a tariff is cut to 5 per cent, the relative importance of non-tariff barriers changes,” Mr Lamy said. He admitted the success of the WTO in imposing trade disciplines was a curse and a blessing. Success has diminished the urgency to bring in new trade rules, but it was the WTO’s very presence that kept frictions and outright trade war at bay during the worst economic crisis since the 1930s in 2008-09.
Although trade collapsed dramatically in 2009, there was no outbreak of protectionism and as a result, trade rebounded strongly last year.
The current WTO trade rules were drafted in the 80s and agreed upon in the 90s and, despite political pressures at home, signatories to the WTO abided by its rules.
Mr Lamy set up a monitoring system in 2008 to spot anti-trade measures and to ensure transparency in national trade policies. To his relief, the incidence of protectionism remained low through the crisis.
But protectionism remained a threat as long as unemployment stays high, he said, adding that 10 per cent unemployment in the US was a “political bomb”.
Exchange rates are another issue creating trade tension challenges for the Geneva-based world trade policeman.
The WTO has an archaic provision, known as Article 15 under the General Agreements on Tariff and Trade, the forerunner of the WTO, that says countries should not use exchange rates to gain advantage in trade. But Article 15 has not been tested and, although some could be tempted to use it, the reality is it would be extremely difficult to prove that a country was using its exchange rate to frustrate its trading partners.
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