BRASILIA/BRUSSELS, 3 September 2003 — Brazil heads to the crucial World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun next week determined to fight for lower trade barriers for farm products and willing to block any agreement that ignores the issue.
As the world’s largest producer of several farm goods, such as sugar, coffee and orange juice, Brazil is demanding that this round of world trade talks remedy the tariffs imposed by rich countries it has complained about for years. “We would rather have no agreement than have a bad agreement,” the Brazilian representative at the WTO, Ambassador Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa, told Reuters.
Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, has a good deal of weight in world trade forums because it is the largest country in South America’s Mercosur trade group. Seixas Correa said although preparatory negotiations for Cancun held in Geneva over the last two weeks did not achieve a consensus between WTO members, ministers meeting in Mexico may still be able to strike a deal.
And Europe’s strategic interests for its farmers remain fundamentally different from those of the United States despite a EU-US accord on reforming global agricultural trade, the EU’s top trade diplomat told AFP.
Defending the tie-up, EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy said the agreement with Washington does not threaten Europe’s traditional alliances. “The proposal which is on the table does not represent a strategic alliance between the United States and Europe on agriculture for a simple reason: our strategic agricultural interests are fundamentally different,” he said in an interview in Brussels.
Malaysia and South Africa agreed yesterday to work together to protect the interests of developing countries at the meeting in Mexico. The accord was reached during three hours of talks in Kuala Lumpur between South African President Thabo Mbeki and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and their delegations, Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told reporters.
Mahathir, who took over from Mbeki as chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement of developing countries earlier this year, is a strong critic of globalization and Western trade practices. Asia-Pacific nations were urged yesterday to vigorously defend the WTO amid concerns that the proliferation of regional and bilateral trade arrangements could undermine the multilateral process.
While countries in the region have benefited immensely from previous market-opening reforms, political leaders and governments have not done enough to champion negotiations seeking to further liberalize the world trading system, speakers told the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council at Bandar Seri Begawan.