30 July 2008

Interview - ABC Radio National

FRAN KELLY: Well, a great opportunity missed, that's how our Trade Minister Simon Crean summed up the collapse of World Trade Talks in Geneva. On the table was a new deal under the WTO's Doha round, but the talks collapsed, as we heard this morning, after US negotiators failed to strike a deal with China and India over subsidy levels and import tariffs.

I spoke to an extremely disappointed Simon Crean earlier this morning, from Geneva.

SIMON CREAN: You know, this was a great opportunity missed, because we had made huge progress over the nine days. That's the incredible thing about this round. The hard issues we'd resolved. We got stuck with a very difficult issue which related to special mechanisms to, for developing countries to invoke to protect their, you know, vulnerable farm sectors.

Now we always recognised that they should have the opportunity to do that in exceptional circumstances, but not to cover normal trade. It was trying to get that balance that proved intractable quite frankly, and it's the classic - it's not just the issue of developed versus developing, there were different views within the developing countries, depending upon whether a country was an exporter or an importer. Now, it was still possible to get an agreement involving this. I'm convinced of that. And that's why we spent so much time trying to finalise it.

But in the end there just wasn't sufficient political will by some of the players to go the extra step. It's unfortunate, but the nature of the organisation - it's not a majority vote, it's a consensus vote, it requires all parties to sign up. You've got to cajole, you've got to convince, you've got to argue, you've got to persist. We did all of that, but in the end it wasn't enough.

KELLY: Minister, some are naming names when it comes to this, and it's been portrayed in the news reports out of Geneva as a face-off basically between American and China and India. And India's Commerce Minister is quoted as saying that America is looking at enhancing its commercial interests, and China, Chinese Commerce Minister is saying that the US was asking a price as high as heaven. Is that fair?

CREAN: Well, I haven't seen those comments. I, but I think this is, people will be defending their own positions. Can I just make the point though that it isn't just the US versus the other two, it is the case that there were, even between India and China, there were different views as to how this mechanism should apply.

The numbers, or the formulas simply couldn't give us the solution. What was therefore needed was the political will to jump over that. There were plenty in the room prepared to give that political will, but not everyone. The end needed everyone. You needed everyone on this issue. We didn't have everyone, and it's a great pity, because now people will know that plenty of what was on the table is no longer secured.

KELLY: Well, from here, I mean what does the outlook look like for developing countries now? Presumably they're the biggest losers from this collapse.

CREAN: Well, I think unfortunately they will lose. But everyone will lose out of this, because, there was a lot on the table, a lot of improved market access. And, you know, at a time in which there is global economic uncertainty, what I think we were looking for was a sign of an injection of confidence; a commitment to embrace the trade openness, because trade grows faster than world output. And each round in the WTO has produced an impetus to economic activity. That was an important dimension to this.

So too was the impact it could have had for developing countries. It was the development round. And there are many of the developing countries that were seriously disappointed that the round failed.

KELLY: And in concrete terms, what does it mean for Australia? What were we poised to get out of this that is now not on the table?

CREAN: Well, we were poised to get significant improved access into the European market, into the US market - particularly in agriculture, but also in industrial products - we were, we would have seen the end to export subsidies out of this round; we would have seen the end to the special safeguards mechanism that existed for developed countries, and which the thing came unstuck for trying to develop a similar mechanism for developing countries. We would have seen big cuts to tariffs. And the other big gain that came was the signalling conference on services; it's such a frustrating circumstance. You know you're that close, but, close enough is not good enough.

ENDS

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