The Hindu Business Line : Hong Kong Ministerial — Changing the terms of engagement

While the final declaration does not reveal it, at Hong Kong, the farmers and the weavers were, as before, pitted against the merchants, only this time, they won. There will be future battles on textiles, services, investments and possibly even on agriculture, but the war has all but been won. Within the green rooms at Hong Kong, the work begun on the streets in Seattle has been completed. The norms of engagement on trade issues have changed.

IN THE heated atmosphere of the World Trade Organisation trade talks, the Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath provided a rare lighter moment. Through the media, he explained to the EU's Trade Commissioner, Mr Peter Mandelson: "If you come with empty pockets, you cannot go shopping."

EU Trade Commissioners have over the past six years, got used to being lectured by developing country ministers, during trade talks. But this time, it was different. Mr Kamal Nath was not reaching out, using the language of old, imperialism, the debt of the old colonial masters, globalisation, poverty.

Instead, he was giving him a lecture on the law of supply and demand and the important role of money, in making the capitalist system work. It was not a lesson Mr Mandelson was unprepared for.

The Hong Kong Ministerial has come and gone. Both sides claim victory. The developing countries managed to get some concessions and there is a distinct possibility of export subsidies being eliminated within the next decade. On the flip side, the rights of 25,000 American farmers remain prioritised over those of the farmers in all of Africa.

European and American agricultural subsidies remain largely intact, with few concessions to the demands of the least developing countries and those staggered into the next decade.

So was this another Pyrrhic victory for the developing countries, where they won the battle for sound bytes, but lost the trade war?

Though possibly too early to predict, trade negotiations crossed a milestone in Hong Kong last week — something similar to what had happened in Seattle, six years ago. At Seattle, the trade talks were completely disrupted and had to be called off when activists laid a successful peaceful siege of the hotel where the negotiations were going on.

Post-Seattle, it became impossible for Trade Ministers of the developed world to completely ignore the interests of the developing world, especially those of the poorest countries. Development of the poorest moved from being a platitude added on, in every document, to becoming a part of domestic political agendas in the Western world.

Between Seattle and Hong Kong, the trade talks meandered through Doha, and Cancun in Mexico with regular stopovers in Geneva for the real talks. At each stopover, the trade negotiations have been changing in tone and character.

At Doha, some Western governments sent Development Ministers as part of the delegations, primarily as a token gesture to silence the voices being raised at home. However, in these Development Ministers, negotiators from the South found allies who would speak on their behalf. It was not the scenario expected, with Northern trade negotiators being pressured from two sides — from the protesters on the street and from within their own system.

By Cancun, the Northern trade negotiators had worked out their plans; the talks were broken into two phases. For the first, the Development Ministers were invited, and before the second they were asked to return home. This way, the public relations exercise would not be allowed to affect the serious business at hand.

Only, by this time, the Southern countries were asserting themselves, the key players from the South — Brazil, South Africa and India — had organised themselves and came to the negotiating table speaking in one voice, with a simple agenda: End subsidies on your agricultural sector.

All of a sudden, the trade negotiators from the West were fighting battles on three fronts — within their own delegations, there were dissenting voices; across the table were a group of developing country trade ministers, who were speaking as a collective; and out on the streets were protestors, loud, raucous, and determined to ensure that on the domestic political agenda in the West the issues of trade and justice remained interlinked.

At Cancun, it became clear that the old order would have to change. And at Hong Kong the old order did change, and the signs were everywhere.

For the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, the positive change was in the first-time-ever entry of NGOs into the negotiating spaces, for others, it was the assertiveness of the developing countries and their ability to stand up to pressure, in the infamous green rooms where the real bare-boned negotiations take place.

The green rooms, where negotiations used to be held, where developing country representatives could be pressured, were no longer the comfortable spaces where power was easily exercised by the North.

But perhaps the real change was in the synchronisation of developing country positions with the action on the streets. Northern Trade Ministers, began to be asked more about the use of pepper spray on protesting South Korean farmers while Mr Kamal Nath and his colleagues held forth on the inadequacies of the proposals from the North.

In a matter of days, Mr Mandelson and his colleagues were talking of entering the green room to protect their strategic interests, while the Southern Trade Ministers, walked in saying. "Our cause is just, we are hear to make the lives of farmers and weavers better."

This was no contest. While the final declaration does not reveal it, at Hong Kong, the farmers and the weavers were, as before, pitted against the merchants. Only, this time, they won.

There will be future battles on textiles, services, investments and possibly even on agriculture, but the war has all but been won. Within the green rooms at Hong Kong the work begun on the streets in Seattle has been completed. The norms of engagement on trade issues have changed.

(The author is a freelance writer.)