Global Trade Talks Hit ‘Impasse,’ Leaders Say

Global Trade Talks Hit ‘Impasse,’ Leaders Say

By JANE PERLEZ and JOE COCHRANE 6:16 AM ET

In a strongly worded statement, the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on Tuesday suggested the talks, known as the Doha round, risked collapse.

By JANE PERLEZ and JOE COCHRANE

Published: October 8, 2013

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Leaders at the Pacific Rim economic summit declared at the end of their two-day meeting here Tuesday that the global trade talks, known as the Doha round, were at an “impasse” and urged trade ministers, due to meet here in December, to get negotiations back on track.

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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday.

In an unusually strongly worded statement, the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, suggested the talks, run by the World Trade Organization and designed to reduce tariffs, particularly for the least developed countries, risked collapse.

“We are now at the 11th hour to put the negotiating function of the World Trade organization back on track,” said the statement, which was read by the host of the summit, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia.

The summit was clouded by the absence of President Obama, who stayed in Washington to try to resolve the fiscal crisis. Without Mr. Obama, who was represented by Secretary of State John Kerry, a brighter spotlight fell on China’s new president, Xi Jinping.

There was relatively little to show for the two days of meetings, dinners and lunches attended by the leaders of 21 economies in the Pacific Rim region, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Several officials acknowledged that the gathering, held in the luxurious confines of the beach resort of Nusa Dua on the Indonesian island of Bali, produced even fewer substantive accomplishments than last year’s meeting, where the group approved an environmental goods and services accord that called for the tariffs on 54 products, like solar panels, to be reduced to 5 percent or less.

Still, the urgency of rescuing the Doha round from collapse caught the summit’s attention, said Allan Bollard, executive director of the APEC Secretariat, which is based in Singapore.

“There’s a strong message they really want Doha to work, but there’s also at the same time quite a high expectation with real big problems around it and something of a sense of frustration about that,” he said.

“In realistic terms, they are feeling that there has to be some deliverables out of Doha – an expectation that there could be a ‘Doha Light.’ They could go in a number of different ways in the next couple of months.”

But in fact, Mr. Bollard added, an agreement has to be reached by early November, a month before a gathering of 159 trade ministers in Bali in early December. These ministers rarely engage in the nitty-gritty negotiations, he said.

The logjam over the Doha round has allowed efforts at regional trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership promoted by the Obama administration to gain steam instead.

But that proposed partnership, a group of 12 countries led by the United States in negotiations designed to lower tariffs across a broad range of items, has run into problems.

At the APEC gathering here, the U.S. trade representative, Michael Froman, urged all the parties – including some of the biggest economies in the region like Japan, Australia, and Canada – to finalize the pact by the end of the year. This goal seemed almost impossible,, officials from several of the participating countries said.

China has not been invited to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and has proposed its own trade grouping, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

In its account of the APEC summit, the China Daily, an English language newspaper in China, slammed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It said the negotiations over it were “confidential talks” and the pact was “widely considered a new step for the United States to dominate the economies in the Asia-Pacific region.”

At the APEC gala dinner Monday night, the leaders wore Indonesian shirts specially tailored for the occasion. Mr. Kerry was given a purple shirt made of a silk-like Balinese fabric called “endek” with a design that represented nine deities of Hinduism. Bali is a Hindu island in the Muslim-majority country of Indonesia.

Mr. Xi wore a red batik shirt, and the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, was dressed in a green one. Before the leaders sat down to the banquet, Mr. Yudhoyono played “Happy Birthday” on a guitar for Mr. Putin, who celebrated his 61st birthday Monday.

The custom of wearing local garb at the gathering started in 1993 when President Clinton distributed bomber jackets to be worn for the group photo at the summit that year in Seattle. In 2011, President Obama, the host of the summit in Honolulu, tried to end the tradition, calling the local garb – which each year seemed to become more awkward – “silly shirts.” That year, the leaders posed for their photo in business wear.

Next year’s APEC summit will be held in Beijing. At a news conference called by the Chinese to discuss their facilities for the summit in the Chinese capital, journalists asked about the severe air pollution that prompts many residents to wear face masks.

Zhao Huimin, the director general of the foreign affairs office of Beijing’s municipal government, did not say what specific measures would be taken to reduce the pollution levels.

But, he said, there was little to worry about because the leaders would meet at a conference center at Yangi Lake in the Hairou district of Beijing, about an hour outside the city. The center, which was the site of the World Conference on Women in 1995, was in the suburbs, he said. 

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