Inside U.S. Trade reported (paywalled) on Ben Conner’s presentation he gave at a Washington International Trade Association (WITA) event on the WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi:
Ben Conner, a partner at DTB AgriTrade, an agricultural trade consultancy, described a “deflated” mood among the agriculture negotiators.
“The first day of the opening session, the ambassador from Thailand – whose rice exporters and farmers are heavily impacted by India’s policies – made an impassioned speech about how this has led to negative repercussions for their producers,” Conner said, adding that the remarks drew applause from representatives of both developing and developed countries. According to Indian media reports, New Delhi complained to Bangkok about the intervention of the Thai ambassador, Pimchanok Vonkorpon Pitfield, which led to her being called back to capital before the end of the ministerial.
“This was a well-liked well-respected diplomat who, I guess, touched the wrong buttons, Conner added. “That kind of set the tone for how agriculture negotiations were going to go.”
Goyal, asked about the incident on Friday, told reporters that India and Thailand were friends and suggested the Thai ambassador held a personal grudge. One official said the Thai ambassador spoke passionately and in a way similar to her interventions in Geneva.
Conner, though, said he shared some of the WTO leaders’ optimism. He charged that the draft text was balanced and “leading in the right direction.”
“It wasn’t stuck in the old Doha framework that we haven’t been able to move past for a long time,” he said, arguing it provided an opportunity to reset negotiations. But he added that India’s strategy, what he described as blaming developed economies and the WTO for its domestic agriculture woes, could limit future progress on the issue.
“That leaves the rest of us kind of stuck with waiting for India to figure out how to be more constructive,” he said, contending that the U.S. and its partners should “look at other ways to raise the ambition in agriculture.”
“Are there plurilateral configurations? Can we try to break the logjam in other ways and get newer issues on the table?” he asked. “There’s a lot of creative ideas in Geneva; there’s a lot of delegates from different countries that have done great work. We just need to find a way to get past this blockage.
Making Sense of the WTO Ministerial