A Glimmer Of Hope For Doha
February 3, 2009 The failing of July’s Doha Round talks translated into more of the same from representatives of seven of the world’s foremost players in global trading. WTO negotiations have been ensnared by technicalities and red-tape bureaucracy since their inception way back in 2001. But there might be a glimmer of hope on the horizon for the negotiators, although they seem to be unaware of that presently.
Ministers from those seven economies – the United States, EU, India, Japan, Brazil, China and Australia – reconvened talks again in early September, this time with a sense of urgency that suggested they may be making progress. Of course that urgency, and a degree of cynicism, had much to do with the coming November Presidential election in the U.S. Negotiators seemed to be attempting to hash out a deal before George W. Bush leaves the White House, possibly taking his moderately pro-free trade stances with him.
A closer look at the two major candidates in the American campaign would suggest, however, that Doha negotiators are shedding an unrealistically negative forecast on the outcome of the election. In fact, either John McCain or Barack Obama would seemingly be a proponent of changing Washington’s culture in relation to free trade.
The sticking point in the ill-fated July negotiations was the issue of how special safeguard measures could be best employed to protect poor farmers when import volumes spike or prices fall. This issue would seem to be especially important to India’s cotton industry, which has wrangled with tumultuous market fluctuations recently.
For his part, McCain has gone on record to support such measures, at least when speaking on American markets. As to the well-publicized issue of the Farm Bill which heavily subsidized American cotton production, McCain takes a strong stance in favor of what nations such as Brazil have been urging America to do for years. “Subsidies are a mistake, and I don’t believe that anybody can say that they’re a fiscal conservative and yet support subsidies which distort markets and destroy our ability to compete in the world, as well as our ability to get cheaper products into the U.S.,” McCain said in a December 2007 debate.
Many may be surprised to hear that Obama sounds eerily similar to McCain on this issue. “Congress subsidizes these big megafarms and hurts family farmers oftentimes in the process. And we’ve got to cap those subsidies so that we don’t have continued concentration of agriculture in the hands of a few large agribusiness interests. But, on the trade issue generally, we’re not going to suddenly cordon off America from the world. Globalization is here, and I don’t think Americans are afraid to compete,” Obama said in August of 2007.
The one difference between the two on the subject is that Obama injects more stipulations about environmental issues, labor laws and safety into his free trade stances than does McCain. As wildly popular as Obama may be in Europe and around the world, McCain probably has a more attractive platform internationally on the subject of free trade.
Of course, none of this is all that different from Bush’s stance for the past eight years. The difference has been that Bush did not carry enough weight in Congress to make a difference. A prime example would be the 2008 Farm Bill. Twice Bush vetoed the bill, and twice Congress overrode him. This is where the candidates could make a difference in changing the culture in Washington. Both Obama and McCain have served in the U.S. Senate admirably. Both have strong allegiances there and the potential to make significant policy shifts out of the Oval Office. So though negotiators scurry to accomplish some sort of deal in September, while they still have Bush to lean on, in actuality they should greet the coming election with a greater sense of hope.
Add photo (Beck Barnes)
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