Thread by @CoppetainPU

Several news stories on the WTO website today, some from meetings late last week. Here are 3.

1. Today's meeting. Director-general @NOIweala said the most feasible priorities for delivery at the year-end ministerial conference were emerging.

1/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

Today's meeting was both a formal Trade Negotiations Committee and informal heads of delegations—unclear how that works since "formal" is on the record with minutes and "informal" is off the record with no minutes.

2/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

The "concrete deliverables": curbing fisheries subsidies; agricultural issues; and trade, health and the COVID-19 pandemic

On fisheries subsides the news story is not specific, except she spoke of "light at the end of the tunnel" and a deal by July

3/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

Agriculture: @NOIweala envisages a "food security package"—"public stockholding", exempting @WFP from export restrictions, curbing domestic support. Plus maybe cotton subsidies, "special safeguard mechanism"

Agreeing all of that will take a miracle

4/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

Trade/health: her comments cover: not restricting exports; boosting vaccine production; praise for countries supporting India and a call to keep that spirit for others; and the proposed waiver on intellectual property protection related to COVID-19

5/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

@NOIweala did not see a solution to the problem of appeals in dispute settlement at the conference, but hoped members could "reach a shared understanding on the types of reforms needed".

The story contains a lot of details on other issues too.

6/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

2. A summary of the agriculture negotiations, April 23 and 28, contains a lot of detail and quotes some members suggesting the ministerial conference could be a mix of agreements on some issues and decisions to guide negotiations in other issues

7/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

For those interested in the geopolitics: the US is active in these negotiations. It was under the Trump administration and now with Biden.

The news story contains a lot of detail, including links to several new papers

8/11

wto.org/english/news_e…

9/11

Personally, I think agreement on a package of the issues by Nov-Dec is going to be very difficult.

Domestic support is really difficult, with such a wide gap in positions between eg US versus China/India.

See also (i) Special safeguard mechanism: tradebetablog.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/rhe…

10/11

(ii) "Public stockholding", already shielded from litigation, and more to do with the purchase price than actual stocks or food security as such—as @Larsbrinkcanada helpfully reminds me regularly 😉🙏🏽

tradebetablog.wordpress.com/2020/08/24/rhe…

3. Finally a news story on the regular committee meeting on anti-dumping—a pretty technical subject involving exporting at abnormally low prices ("dumping"). But it is important politically because this is seen as unfair competition.

Read on

11/11

wto.org/english/news_e…