Compromise on Farm Issue Revives Trade Talks

Global free-trade talks were hauled back from the brink of crisis Wednesday after two days of wrangling between the European Union and other food-producing nations over a mechanism to set the bar for import tariff cuts.

Their compromise agreement on an issue that might make a huge difference to Brazil, Australia and other big exporters of grain and meat cleared a huge obstacle to completion of the so-called Doha trade round, which could bring new zest to the global economy.

“It was a significant breakthrough today,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Portman said as ministers of the World Trade Organization’s key member states ended a meeting here.

“Without that ... the round would have continued to be stalled,” he told reporters.

The agreement on a formula for calculating agricultural import tariffs -- a technical issue that leaves import tariff cuts still to be agreed upon -- was based on an EU proposal.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the negotiations had been “hard going” but were only the first stage of a longer effort to wrap up the trade round, which aims to lower barriers to global commerce and was launched in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.

“This is the hors d’oeuvre. The main course will be more complex and harder, but hopefully more digestible,” he said.

The World Bank says the Doha round, originally scheduled for completion last year, could lift more than 500 million people out of poverty and trigger growth by injecting billions of dollars into the world economy.

A blueprint agreed on last year set out principles for pursuing work on areas including farm trade and industrial tariffs.

But negotiators are still bogged down over how to slash rich states’ farm subsidies, give poor-country producers a better deal and open up markets for goods and services such as telecommunications and tourism.