Trade ministers and senior officials, who met in New Delhi on 19-20 March, defended the role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) both as an arbiter of trade disputes as well as for setting the rules of the road towards the multilateral trading system.

The officials also discussed the possible steps for negotiations at the global trade club in the wake of the Buenos Aires ministerial conference last year, which ended unfortunately with no results.

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According to the Government of India, representatives of around 50 WTO member countries participated the event, of which 27 were trade ministers or vice-ministers. Also on hand was the WTO Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo. There was a forceful presentation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While China’s vice-minister and South Africa’s minister participated, neither the US nor the EU was represented at this level. Its new WTO ambassador, Dennis Shea, represented the US, while Australia and New Zealand also sent their ambassadors. Russia’s chief trade negotiator, Maxim Medvedkov, was also present.

Many WTO members had hoped that the trade body’s 11th ministerial conference, held in Buenos Aires last December, would take decisions on select negotiating areas and identify a roadmap for the future in others.

However, the meeting ended without reaching any substantive agreements at the multilateral level, specifically on how to move forward on ongoing negotiations on controversial issues such as agriculture, fisheries, and services.

Some participants were optimistic that the New Delhi meeting could contribute to rebuilding trust among the WTO members, particularly in the wake of the failure of the Buenos Aires conference.

India’s Commerce and Industry minister, Suresh Prabhu, told the press that “free and frank discussions” had helped countries to clear the air following the Buenos Aires conference.

Topics reportedly up for discussion in New Delhi included long-standing issues such as public stockholding for food security, as well as negotiations on disciplining harmful fisheries subsidies, among others.

Several interventions had emphasised the importance of achieving progress on the Doha issues, especially agriculture, subsidy for fisheries, and domestic regulation in services, while seeking to address the differences on the basis of pragmatic and flexible options.

As regards agriculture, Prabhu’s concluding remarks noted that some interventions had also identified as priority areas such “issues that are related to reforms in domestic support, a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security purposes, cotton, and an agricultural special safeguard mechanism.”

He also noted that several countries had highlighted the importance of concluding negotiations on fishery subsidies by 2019 in order to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal, which sets a 2020 deadline for scrapping subsidies to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU) and for banning subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity.

The statements also included declarations on e-commerce, investment facilitation, women’s economic empowerment, and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

The e-commerce and investment initiatives are intended to lay the groundwork for future negotiations among interested members, while those on gender and MSMEs are not aimed at negotiations but instead focus on addressing knowledge gaps, sharing experiences and suitable practices, and fostering more in-depth and informed discussions on the issues involved.

“In many interventions it was emphasised that open, transparent, and inclusive discussions within the joint initiatives by the proponents of issues such as e-commerce, investment facilitation, gender, MSMEs, etc., would deepen the understanding of issues and benefit all members,” Prabhu said.

He noted however, that some other members felt that “all negotiations at the WTO must follow the fundamental principle of multilateralism and that any other approach represents a threat to the multilateral trading system.”

The signatories to the e-commerce and investment facilitation meetings each held organisational meetings in Geneva. These were open both to those who signed the joint statements and to non-signatories as well.

Separately, a workshop was held on gender-based analysis of trade on 16 March as part of the programme for implementing the Buenos Aires Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment.

For his part, Azevêdo welcomed the New Delhi meeting as an opportunity for renewed discussion, while noting the “animosity” and disappointment that was pronounced at the Buenos Aires ministerial.

“All members realise the seriousness of the situation, and the fact that we all together need to work to find a solution in all areas. The spirit that I detected today is one that recognises that the solution lies in collective work”, he said.

He added that while the “constructive conversation” that emerged towards the end of the Buenos Aires conference had come too late, it could be built on now. “Just pledging support for the system is not enough. We need to match words with deeds,” he added.

After the event, the European Commission’s Denis Redonnet and Director, Legal Affairs WTO, wrote on Twitter that the meeting served as “a useful moment of engagement at a time of stress for the multilateral trading system.”

The mini-ministerial could be seen as an attempt to carry forward on talks in January among a group of trade ministers on the margins of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, and ahead of an annual ministerial meeting in Paris next month within the context of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Earlier, Azevêdo had warned participants that members must take urgent action to ensure the global trade body’s dispute settlement mechanism continues to function normally, in the wake of Washington’s move last year to block the start of selection processes for filling vacancies in the WTO Appellate Body.

That panel serves as the organisation’s highest trade court and currently has three slots vacant, out of seven total positions. Given that three Appellate Body members must sign off on any case, the court is at risk of being unable to function should the impasse continue next year. A fourth position comes up for renewal in September.

The meeting in Delhi was held amid growing concerns that planned US tariffs on imported steel and aluminium could spark responsive measures from other countries. These new duties, to take effect this month, have been confirmed by President Trump earlier this month.

In his concluding remarks, Prabhu said that in many interventions “deep concern was expressed at the serious threat posed to the credibility of the WTO rules and some of its cardinal principles, such as non-discrimination, by the cycle of recent unilateral trade measures and proposed counter-measures.”

In New Delhi, Azevêdo said that the WTO did not take a stance on this particular issue as an institution. However, he did iterate to reporters that he was concerned over the fact that the US measures could lead to an escalation of retaliatory action by other countries, while calling for members to resolve their differences by using the WTO’s own mechanisms.

The writer, a retired Professor of International Trade, is author of World Trade Organisation: Implications for Selected Sectors of Indian Economy. He may be reached at vasu022@gmail.com