Press Release – Professor Jane Kelsey
The final showdown, over many hours, centred on whether a moratorium on tariffs on digital transmissions would be renewed a key demand for Big Tech and which the US was demanding be made permanent.
The 14th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) collapsed late last night after a fractious and heavily manipulated meeting that was designed to abandon existing mandates and replace them with an agenda driven by the United States and European Union.
The conference agenda reflected almost a year of backroom manoeuvres, led by the informally appointed Norwegian “facilitator”, to advance the reform agenda for the WTO of those power brokers. New Zealand, one of the “Friends of the System” is also an active supporter.
“The existential crisis facing the WTO was laid bare during this ministerial, with power politics and bullying from the US, enabled by the Director-General, on one hand, and backlash from the least powerful Least Developed Countries through to the developing country powerhouses of India and Brazil. Significantly, the latter prevailed”, according to Auckland University Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey, who has been attending the ministerial.
“In many ways this is Trump’s chickens coming home to roost”, Kelsey said.
The final showdown, over many hours, centred on whether a moratorium on tariffs on digital transmissions would be renewed – a key demand for Big Tech and which the US was demanding be made permanent. That was finessed into a renewal for 5 years, with a process likely to lead to its continuation.
Brazil’s ambassador, reportedly acting under instructions from President Lula, put a stake in the ground for developing countries whose digital development and revenue would be most seriously affected. He apparently insisted on two years renewal or nothing.
Kelsey reflected that “with no agreement, the US went back empty handed and will need to explain that to the administration’s Big Tech allies, while Lula made it clear to Trump that Brazil would not be bullied yet again”.
Before that, Least Developed Countries had objected that their request for special flexibilities following “graduation” to development country status had been seriously cut back.
In a further rebuff to “reformers”, the MC14 failed to create a precedent for plurilateral agreements among a sub-group of members to replace multilateralism where all countries issues and voices are addressed.
Adoption of the first of these plurilaterals, the Investment Facilitation Agreement, promoted by China, and supported for its systemic value by the “reformers”, required consensus. It was to be a highlight of the ministerial. But again, developing countries made it clear that this was not acceptable, at least until safeguards had been put in place to prevent proliferation of such deals.
Reflecting on what happens next, Jane Kelsey concludes that: “The outcome reflects a rejection by developing countries of moves to remake the WTO to reflect the new global trade regime driven by power plays, rather than principles, and to silence their voices. Whether this resolve will continue when the process returns to WTO headquarters in Geneva remains to be see”.
Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
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