Le New-York Times fait le point sur les enjeux des négociations actuelles:
- AGRICULTURE
The main goal of this round of negotiations is to lift barriers to farm trade, but this is also proving the most elusive goal. The agriculture talks fall into three broad categories.
- EXPORT SUBSIDIES
Rich countries have been using export subsidies to dump excess food below cost in poor countries, bankrupting many farmers there. Negotiators agreed in July 2004 to phase out all export subsidies, although the schedule for doing so is under debate.
- TRADE-DISTORTING SUBSIDIES
Trade-distorting domestic subsidies have proved more troublesome, with the French in particular blocking deep cuts. The United States offered this autumn to make slightly deeper cuts, but that offer has been criticized by agricultural exporters and activist groups as too little, too late.
- MARKET ACCESS
The market access talks involve reducing tariffs, which are taxes on imports, and quotas, which are numerical limits on imports. Here again the European Union, and especially the French, have opposed deep cuts.
- COTTON
In a largely separate but highly emotional dispute, West African nations are pressing the United States to comply with a W.T.O. panel ruling that American cotton subsidies are not legal under existing W.T.O. rules.
- INDUSTRIAL GOODS
These talks mainly involve lowering tariffs on manufactured products, as most quotas have already been eliminated. Tariffs in big industrial nations are already lower than in poor nations, but the detailed formula for further reductions is hotly debated. Brazil and India still protect their markets from imports and have resisted deep cuts in tariffs. Many countries worry that lower tariffs will mainly benefit China, which has surging exports in many industries.
- SERVICES
Fewer than half the members of the W.T.O.—73—have bothered to submit initial offers for how they might reduce restrictions on foreign competition in their markets for services like banking and insurance, and only 30 have submitted revised offers to take account of other countries’ offers.
- TRADE FACILITATION
These rules are aimed at relieving bureaucracy and corruption at border crossings by streamlining customs procedures. Such disputes, and a dispute over cotton, derailed the last ministerial conference in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico.
- ENVIRONMENT
Many environmentalists want countries to be able to restrict the import of goods that are produced in environmentally destructive ways in other countries. But many exporters oppose this, and the idea has received little serious discussion among trade ministers.
- AID FOR TRADE
The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Group of 7 industrial nations have all said that they will provide aid for poor countries to help them adjust to any new trade rules that may be negotiated.
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