WTO Faces The Most Serious Crisis. How Can Many Members Discuss How To Start A New Business?

6 months later, Brazil's WTO (WTO) director general Azevedo once again appeared in China.

This time, his main task is to attend the week of APEC leaders' meeting.

Since November 7th, he has met with ministers of trade in the APEC economy, who had been fighting in Geneva.

At the same time, he also called on China's top leaders.

Reporters learned that in addition to the 7 visit to China's commerce minister Gao Hucheng and Vice Premier Wang Yang, he also attended the opening ceremony of the 9 APEC business leaders summit and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Compared with the optimistic attitude of Qingdao's APEC trade ministers' meeting in May this year, Azevedo's manner and tone are slightly heavier.

In the past six months, Modi, the newly installed Prime Minister of India, has stranded the WTO negotiation process with a more forceful negotiating attitude.

WTO faces the most serious crisis

Reporters have learned from different sources that the multilateral negotiation system of Geneva has stopped functioning.

Moreover, the more direct impact of this paralysis is the road choice to rewrite the multilateral mechanism of WTO.

In other words, quite a number of members began to discuss how to start a new business and bypass the counter parties such as India so as to implement the package agreement reached in Bali Island last year.

Azevedo 8 confirmed this point when interviewed by reporters.

He said that the deadlock could be regarded as the most serious crisis facing WTO, and it could be attributed to the differences between the United States and India.

Although during the APEC meeting week, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the United States and India had begun to re contact, but it has not been successful.

"I can't comment on these talks because I don't know what they discussed.

There are indeed some encouraging signs, but I hope these signs can really be applied to specific measures and push for a real breakthrough, according to reporters.

Azevedo has repeatedly stressed that on the eve of last year's Bali Island conference, leaders of various economic leaders who were unwilling to devote their energies to the negotiations gathered together to push forward and eventually reach the "Bali package agreement".

Now, he has resumed his confidence journey.

After meeting with China's top leaders, on the 9 day, he set out for Australia to prepare for the 15 group of twenty summit in Brisbane (G20) with a view to gaining more political support.

In December last year, the "Bali package agreement" reached at the ninth Ministerial Conference of WTO could be regarded as the limited achievement of ending the 10 year WTO Doha round, but everything was reversed when the agreement was formally signed in July 31st this year.

According to reporters, Azevedo is an ambitious director general who does not want to push ahead with the Doha round of the former Lamy, but wants to create his own "Azevedo era".

Therefore, in the past 12 years of difficult circumstances, the conclusion of the "Bali package agreement" is only a respectable conclusion to the Doha round so that the new round can be reopened.

But at present, the only achievement has been challenged.

The Bali package agreement consists of 10 documents, mainly dealing with trade facilitation, agriculture and cotton and development issues.

Among them, the trade facilitation agreement became the first multilateral agreement reached in the 18 years since the establishment of WTO. It is also the only legally binding agreement in the early harvest. The other are ministerial decisions, ministerial statements or memorandums of understanding.

This package agreement is a "early harvest" or a reduced version of the Doha round.

Because the 36 issues in the Doha round were reduced to 10, and did not cover the core issues.

In accordance with the terms of the agreement, this year July 31st is the first deadline for the entry into force of the trade facilitation agreement. Members of the WTO need to formally incorporate the agreement into the WTO rules system on the basis of unanimous agreement before that date.

Thereafter, the protocol will be submitted to WTO members for approval. The agreement will come into force on the second deadline, before July 31, 2015, when members of the 2/3 approve and accept the relevant protocol.

However, some members represented by India "regretted" at the last minute, which led to the signing of the first phase of the agreement.

According to the reporter's explanation, at present, the WTO negotiations are divided into 4 circles. These circles are interlinked and must be solved one after another.

Originally, the issue of food security as the main topic of the agricultural sector of the "Bali package agreement" is not related to the trade facilitation agreement.

However, due to India's concern about the issue of food security, it has finally become a necessary and sufficient condition for signing the agreement on trade facilitation.

This runs counter to the process of the US's eagerly led trade facilitation agreement.

In Azevedo's words, the differences between the US and India are mainly caused by the political connections between trade facilitation and public reserves, and "although the current stalemate is only related to the two elements of the Bali agreement, its impact is very far-reaching.

The current stalemate has paralyzed multilateral negotiations in WTO.

Is "true opposition" or "behind the scenes trade" between us and India?

The second circle is the relationship between the aforementioned two topics and the other eight topics.

The third circle is the whole Doha round.

The fourth circle is the global value chain.

India and its members, such as Cuba and South Africa, refused to sign the trade facilitation agreement unilaterally, which led to the difficulty of negotiating cards in the first circle.

As the way of international trade negotiations can only end successfully in one round and start another round, the result is a complete stalemate of the entire WTO multilateral negotiation mechanism.

"Azevedo should not be clear about whether the differences between the US and India are real opposites, or double play, and behind the scenes deals."

The observers commented.

In fact, this impasse had long existed before the signing of the Bali package agreement.

At that time, the focus of negotiations was on the contradiction between domestic grain reserves of developing members and WTO's commitment to reduce agricultural subsidies.

Because commodity prices have been rising in recent years, India needs space to carry out unfinished grain public reserves and food aid programs.

According to the food safety bill previously passed by India, it will buy grain in the name of the government and subsidize the 2/3 population at a low subsidy price.

However, according to

In the agricultural agreement, the government has a certain upper limit for the purchase of agricultural products at the administrative price, and over 10% of them are illegal subsidies.

In recent years, prices of agricultural products have continued to rise, and India and other members have demanded a 10% ceiling.

Therefore, we must first address the concerns of the food security issue and then push forward the agreement on trade facilitation.

"In the past years, India has always wanted to play an independent role and has not played a leading role in promoting the development of multilateral negotiations."

Zhao Zhongxiu, vice president of the University of foreign trade and economic affairs, commented that "the recent new prime minister took office was only a fuse for refusing to sign."

A hard journey to preserve the achievements of "post Bali"

Those members who waited for the entry into force of the trade facilitation agreement and tried to maintain the above results also had differences on how to facilitate the final outcome.

Azevedo told reporters that some members were already impatient, and they were very worried. They had begun to consider whether or not some non multilateral mechanisms could be used to solve the current stalemate and the implementation of the "Bali package agreement".

"There are many alternatives to be decided by members.

As for what methods they are adopting and when to take such measures, I do not yet have the exact answer.

He said.

Azevedo clearly realized that the divergence of this path, whatever the solution, must be resolved within the WTO and supported in a way that does not harm the multilateral trading system.

However, just bypassing the current members of India, who obstruct the negotiation process, or starting a new business, creating multilateral agreements involves revising the basic multilateral rules of WTO.

And this discussion has gone into chaos.

Among them,

The difficulty is that on the one hand, as an active country in global goods trade, the trade facilitation measures are more obvious, but on the other hand, if the multilateral agreements based on the rich country club are replaced, it is also difficult to accept.

A slightly embarrassing signal is that almost all American journalists' questions about Azevedo were focused on the possibility of reaching a consensus between China and the United States in multilateral negotiations such as the information technology trade agreement (ITA) at the WTO press conference held at APEC.

According to the reporter's response, he has harvested the positive support signals from the APEC trade ministers. Whether ITA or the Asia Pacific Free Trade Area (FTAAP) and the global value chain (GVC) promoted by China in the APEC conference, any way to facilitate trade facilitation is a good thing no matter what way it is carried out.