Audio: Thoughts on the WTO Ministerial Conference

World Trade Organization (WTO) members recently concluded their 10th Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) praised the conference for offering WTO members an opportunity to consider new approaches to unresolved trade issues.

In the attached audio report, Thad Lively, U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) senior vice president for trade access, offers his thoughts on the Nairobi conference and specifically addresses the agreement WTO members reached on elimination of export subsidies. Under this agreement, developed countries will eliminate export subsidies immediately and developing countries must phase them out within three years.

The United States does not utilize export subsidies or similar support programs for meat exports. As for our primary competitors, the European Union has employed meat export subsidies in the past, but has used them very sparingly in recent years. So the main impact of the agreement reached in Nairobi will be to ensure that the EU does not reactivate its meat export subsidies, and eliminate the possibility of other meat-exporting countries launching new subsidies.

TRANSCRIPT:

Joe Schuele: U.S. trade officials praised the recent World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference as having successful outcomes for U.S. interests. In this U.S. Meat Export Federation report, Thad Lively, senior vice president for trade access, offers his thoughts.

Thad Lively: The WTO is now going to have an opportunity to refashion their focus and find some relevance to the local trading community in some new ways. And I think what we’re going to see is the WTO is going to be a place where countries come together and negotiate agreements that a significant share of WTO members find useful and beneficial, but not necessarily all members, so the framework that the WTO has been negotiating under for 15 years—the Doha Round, as it was called – is going to be permitted to slip into the past as the WTO moves forward. I think that’s going to prove to be a plus, overall.

Joe Schuele: One of the key outcomes of the Ministerial Conference was an agreement to eliminate export subsidies.

Thad Lively: We haven’t used export subsidies in beef and pork and lamb for a very long time, and even when we did this wasn’t a significant part of our agricultural policy. But some countries, notably the European Union, have relied heavily on the use of export subsidies in all sectors, including meat. In periods when they’ve had surplus production and they needed to find a way to move that product in the global market, the only way they could do it was by providing the owners of that product with a subsidy. So the elimination of export subsidies, this is going to result in some really important changes in the way global trade occurs – not so much for meat, because the Europeans have been using their subsidies sparingly for meat in recent years, but for some other products this is going to fundamentally change the global dynamic.

Joe Schuele: For more on this and other trade issues, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.