Update on Doha

Farm and Ranch November 16, 2009 The Doha round of trade talks under the World Trade Organization have been going on for eight years now. Agriculture is one of the areas of negotiation. While some things have been agreed to, nothing is final until everything in the round is agreed upon.

Montana farmer and chairman of the Joint International Trade Committee of the National Association of Wheat Growers and U.S. Wheat Associates, Dale Schuler, gave this update on Doha following the wheat industry’s recent fall meeting.

Schuler: “Areas that they are still working on concern market access. Reductions in tariffs and quotas and also the designation of the things they call special safe guard mechanisms where they can increase the tariffs if there is an import surge. And we want to make sure those levels are high enough that those restrictions are not imposed just through normal cyclical trade import increases. So the special safeguard mechanisms are an issue. Special product designation where they can impose tariffs on products they call special and they might be able to designate a fairly high level of the import product lines or tariff lines, which could still allow them to impose high tariffs on 90% of their trade. So there wouldn‘t be any increased access for us. So those are issues we are looking at.”

But Schuler says the political will to move Doha forward is not very high right now given the economic environment.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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