Global Trade Deal Elusive as U.S. and India Spar on Food in Bali

Talks to produce a global trade

accord headed into their final day in Bali with no deal in sight

as India and the U.S. negotiate over food security.

Trade officials from the U.S. and India, the world’s two

largest democracies, held meetings into the early hours of this

morning on the Indonesian island without agreement on a

compromise text aimed at resolving a dispute over spending on

subsidized food, according to Daniel Pruzin, an analyst at

Bloomberg BNA, who cited unidentified officials.

Failure to reach an agreement on a Bali package including

trade facilitation would diminish confidence in the 159-member
World Trade Organization, its spokesman Keith Rockwell said

yesterday. Members have been negotiating the Doha round of trade

talks for 12 years and this week’s meeting is seen as the last

chance for a deal.

“If we fail here, and it’s still a real possibility, it’s

hard to see how you make further progress on the Doha

development round,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman

told Bloomberg TV Indonesia in an interview yesterday.

India wants a solution to its demands to exempt food

security plans from being counted under subsidy spending caps,

while the U.S. is concerned surplus from India’s food program

may get dumped onto world markets.

“India speaks for the vast majority of poor people in the
developing countries and the poor countries,” Anand Sharma, its

commerce minister, told reporters in Bali yesterday. “India is

not alone.”

Bilateral Deals

The talks, hosted by Indonesian Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan who wants to run for the country’s presidential

elections next year, are scheduled to finish this afternoon. Any

last-minute deal between the U.S. and India would still need the

approval of other WTO members.

Froman and ministers from some Asia-Pacific countries will

head from Bali to Singapore for talks over the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord. The leak last month of a

document purported to be part of the draft text dented optimism

that those talks can be concluded by the end of this year,

Mustapa Mohamed, Malaysia’s international trade minister, said

in a Nov. 20 interview with Bloomberg.

The lack of progress in Bali will put the focus back on

regional trade agreements, said Alan Bollard, executive director

of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping,

whose leaders also met in Bali this year.

“The WTO negotiations have got so complex with 159

different countries involved that we are really wondering

whether there is a future for these very big complete

comprehensive agreements like this,” Bollard told Bloomberg TV
Indonesia in an interview in Bali yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story:

Neil Chatterjee in Jakarta at

nchatterjee1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Rosalind Mathieson at

rmathieson3@bloomberg.net

Global Trade Deal Elusive as U.S. and India Spar on Food in Bali