Adhemar Mineiro represents the Brazilian Trade Network REBRIP. He is blogging from Geneva this week at the WTO Ministerial.
The Brazilian position in the WTO talks, and especially at the 7th Ministerial this week, reflects in a certain way the assumption that they went too far last year to try to make a deal. With the subsequent financial crisis, after Lehmann Brother’s default, and the result of the elections in the U.S., it became evident that showing all their cards was not a good move.
At this moment, governments are stalled in their position, waiting for the other to make a move. In some bilateral discussions with the U.S., Brazilian negotiators asked for more solid positions and dates. They got only a very general assessment from the U.S. Trade Representative saying that concluding the Doha round is important for the multilateral trading system, and the round must be concluded in 2010. But the U.S. is not saying how to achieve the conclusion of the round.
There are also concerns among Brazilian authorities that, in the case of the failure to conclude the Doha round, the adoption of protectionist measures would increase, threatening the trade liberalization process. At this moment, the Brazilian government sees the possibility of failure of the Doha round more as a risk than as a possibility of building another path towards a new multilateral trading system.
