World Trade Organisation's future in doubt after India blocks trade deal

Guardian UK ^ | 01 August 2012 | Katie Allen and Angela Monaghan

[Lorianne]

The future of the World Trade Organisation has been thrown into doubt after eleventh-hour attempts to salvage a global trade deal collapsed.

Talks broke down after India's refusal to back a deal unless it included concessions allowing developing countries freedom to subsidise and stockpile food.

An agreement on the deal, centred on loosening global customs rules, had been reached in Bali in December, with a deadline of midnight on Thursday to ratify it. But it was scuppered after the WTO's 160 members failed to reach agreement over India's demands.

It would have been the first global trade deal reached by the Geneva-based institution since it was founded almost two decades ago. The last-minute failure to reach agreement prompted questions over the very existence of the WTO and how it will survive the deadlock.

Admitting defeat, Roberto Azevêdo, the director general, was candid about the challenges facing WTO.

Speaking about the future of the organisation, Azevêdo said: "What this means for the WTO will be in the hands of the members. I think we should take the time to reflect and come back in September."

Created in 1995, the WTO was set up to help trade flow smoothly and freely around the world. It describes its main tasks as facilitating trade negotiations and handling trade disputes.

[Pecos]

A question about the 2nd sentence of the article. Does it imply that the WTO was somehow going to force countries to trade their food away?

[dfwgator]

Good. Kill It.

[cripplecreek]

Nations should make or break their deals at will with their own best interests in mind.

[trisham]

"Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish?
Nothing else."

~Epictetus

God bless this site, this Free Republic.
Please click the pic

[pfony1]

Of course, it could ALSO mean that “GLOBAL trade deals” are too far away from market forces to actually “work”.

Why would anyone think that “one-size-fits-all” socialism is NOT suicidal?

[DannyTN]

If that means we can raise import tariffs and bring back American jobs, I’m all for the death of the WTO.

[Lorianne]

I don’t know. It seems that in the past countries like India (and China) have been able to coerce food concessions in trade deals that have nothing to do with food. Maybe that era is over? Too soon to tell I would think.

One possibility is that China is now buying up valuable farmland all over, primarily in Africa, to feed its own population. That may leave others out in the cold without sufficient leverage to get free food deal concessions in trade deals. Just a thought.

[BipolarBob]

Yeah, it would be a darn shame if the WTO and UN were both to disappear.

/s

[factoryrat]

WTO=least common denominator. Maybe they ran out of cheap slave labor in asia, the Indians decided they don't want to be the next china, and the multinationals are running out of communist countries to exploit. Of course, there's always africa and the middle east, if the powers to be could just stop them from killing each other. Or, central and south america could provide cheap labor, if the could just get the european style dictators down there to crack the whip, and provide some compliant peasant labor.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

(from the article) :"Talks broke down after India's refusal to back a deal unless it included
concessions allowing developing countries freedom to subsidise and stockpile food.

Do you mean that the country of India wants to be "Preppers " ?
and that is a violation of the World Trade Organization ?
JEEZE ! The nerve of any country to not tow the line on United Nations , AGENDA 21
or try to be independant of World Domination !!

[GeronL]

The US subsidizes food like crazy, but they don’t want to let other countries do it?

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

GeronL:" The US subsidizes food like crazy, but they don’t want to let other countries do it?"

Heck no ! Otherwise we would lose our 'sphere of influence'
and would lose market share of dumping GMO / Monsanto food products which are already indemnified by the US FEDGovt.

[kearnyirish2]

“Nations should make or break their deals at will with their own best interests in mind.”

India knows it can do just that; an Indian friend said the country should be viewed more as a continent than a country in the Western sense. The population is huge and diverse, and they have various climates within it. As the largest of the non-aligned nations during the Cold War, India is very aware of its position globally.