Veneman: No Launch Meant WTO ‘Undermined'

November 19, 2001

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman believes that had a new round of trade negotiations not been launched at Doha, Qatar, the entire World Trade Organization structurre could have been weakened. "I think that if we had not succeeded in launching a new round now, it would have undermined the World Trade Organization, our ability to be participants in that, to use it as a dispute settlement mechanism that we've seen benefit our farmers and ranchers," she told the National Association of Farm Broadcasters.

When the Uruguay Round turned nontariff barriers into tariff equivalents through "tariffication," the United States and other countries "achieved a tremendous market access agreement" that she hopes will decrease the tariff system even more.

Her goals and those of the Bush admministration are not new: "to get greater market access, to reduce and phase out export subsidies, and to reduce trade-distorting domestic support."

"The real sticking point in the negotiations there, was we started out with a text," Veneman said.. "It was a text that was presented by the chairman, and so many countries wanted so many different things in that text, it didn't really achieve what they wanted, but as the days progressed we were able to basically isolate the European Union with the so-called Cairns Group of ag-exporting countries, and then even Japan, who's always been the last to come around on any ag trade negotiation, all said that while this text isn't perfect and what everybody wants, it is the best text to go forward," Veneman explained.

Europe was isolated, "because they didn't like the words `with a view to phasing out export subsidies,' because they thought that that predetermined the result, and they were threatened by that and wanted the words `phasing out' to be eliminated from the text. In the end, there were a couple of words that were put in saying `without prejudging the outcome.' Well, you don't prejudge the outcome of a trade negotiation in any event. So those clarifying words really didn't change the text as we were hoping it would go forward with the words `to phase out export subsidies.' So, in the end, we have an agreement that really will allow us to negotiate on those three pillars--market access, domestic supports, and, most importantly, export subsidies."

In addition to the agricultural text, she added, environmental standards were "tightened" that could have spelled trouble had that not occurred. "There was negotiated a new section on environmental agreements in this text, and while there has been some concern about that, in fact, we believe it's a great victory also for American agriculture, because at this point in time some of these environmental agreements have been of great concern to American agriculture, whether it's the biosafety protocol or the Montreal protocol, and what this agreement now says is we're going to look at a way to integrate the rules of trade of the WTO with environmental agreements which are not now subject to trade rules, and so we think that's very important."

U.S. negotiators "played a key role in looking at ways to make sure that text was very tight, so it didn't impact any agreements, or impact our ability under any agreements that we weren't party to, and, in the end, we believe that's a very significant achievement in this text as well."

In addition, one of Europe's favorite trade expressions, the "precautionary principle," was not included. "That principle they wanted in there to be able to use, we believe, could have undermined the whole sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, allowing countries to say, well, in the interest of precaution we're going to take this action, undermining the sound science that's contained in the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, and that we could not live with, and that was not allowed to go into the text."