Trade-offs

The agreement may be far from perfect, but it's a relief that the WTO has hammered out a deal to eliminate farm export subsidies over the next decade:

Trade negotiators approved an agreement Sunday requiring wealthy countries to end farm export subsidies by 2013, a support system that poor nations say puts them at a competitive disadvantage...

The way was opened to an agreement when delegates managed a last-minute breakthrough on farm subsidies, with wealthy countries agreeing to eliminate their payments to promote exports like cotton and sugar by 2013. Developing countries say the subsidies make it hard for poor farmers to compete.

Poor countries had pushed for the farm subsidies to end by 2010, while the EU held out for 2013. But the accord includes a provision that a substantial part of the subsidies should end by "the first half of the implementation period" to set at a later date...

The agreement also calls on wealthy countries to allow, by 2008, duty-free and quota-free trade privileges for at least 97 per cent of products exported by the least developed countries, those with per capita incomes of less than $860 Cdn a year.

While an ideal agreement would have seen more subsidies included in the cuts and a shorter time frame for reduction, it's at least a plus to have complete agreement to move in the right direction. And the principals involved rightly note that this deal will help generate momentum for more talks in the future.

For too long international trade has been based on a framework which only made trade more difficult for the states which most needed it. And even if there hasn't been as much progress as hoped, at the very least the 149 WTO members have now acknowledged that that needs to change.