“The WTO in Cancun and Beyond: An Agenda for Progress in the Doha Development Round”
Over fifty years ago, the United States led the world in establishing a rules-based global trading system. Resultant growth and development helps create new markets for U.S. businesses and new jobs for U.S. workers. However, uneven economic performance threatens already tenuous public support for continued trade liberalization. Therefore, the U.S. and other nations must do their best to ensure that the Doha Development Round yields additional progress.
A cornerstone of this effort will be to harmonize, reduce and, where possible eliminate tariffs worldwide. This will save American families an estimated $18 billion a year in import taxes. But it will also reduce Federal revenues by a substantial amount. In the same vein, tariff elimination by the least developed countries would mean a significant revenue shortfall that these countries would have great difficulty recouping. Other issues, such as agriculture, investment, services, intellectual property, government procurement, Customs issues (trade facilitation) and competition policy will occupy various places on the agenda. That said, U.S. business is especially concerned that the Doha Round address several other key concerns:
- Investment. Transparency and high standards of discipline are key to a successful negotiation. The Doha Round must advance these principles at all levels of government, not just national levels. In addition, the Doha Round must take care to minimize politicization of disputes between investors and states.
- Intellectual property. The Doha Round must make every effort to ensure prompt and full implementation of existing intellectual property rights commitments undertaken by WTO members. In addition, the Round must revisit agreements reached in November 2001 that effectively compel companies to license their intellectual property upon request/demand by governments, in the name of public health. Negotiators must agree on strict conditions under which private parties can be compelled to license their intellectual property.
- Trade remedies. Premature or unwarranted U.S. concessions on antidumping and other trade remedy laws will all but guarantee a failure to obtain approval of a Doha Round agreement in the U.S. Congress – not to mention compromise U.S. firms’ ability to obtain warranted relief against unfairly-traded imports. Trade remedy laws should be objective and their application should be fact-based.
- Trade, labor and environment. The Doha Round should reaffirm the primacy of other international mechanisms – the International Labor Organization and Multilateral Environment Agreements – for consideration of labor and environmental disputes, and oppose the use of trade sanctions to resolve such disputes.
- Biotechnology. The Doha Round should reaffirm that signatory nations must base their national biotechnology laws and policies on sound science and not erect new discriminatory trade and investment barriers under the guise of public health. Additionally, the Doha Round should reaffirm that the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS agreement), which stipulates that these laws and policies should be science-based, applies to biotechnology products and processes, and oppose any efforts to modify the SPS Agreement or incorporate “precautionary principle”-style language in any subsequent agreements.
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