On Food Security. The first thing to note is that food security and trade facilitation have been closely linked for some time. Certainly they were in the final hours of MC9. The link was a prominent feature of Keith Rockwell's press briefing in Bali last Friday afternoon, December 6. "A deal on food security," he said, "would have a catalytic effect on trade facilitation." Mr. Rockwell is the spokesman for the WTO.
He did not say that the trade facilitation agreement was being held hostage to India's desire for a WTO pass on her food stockholding program, but many others did. And India seems to have gotten her way. She wanted an open-ended limitation on the ability of WTO members to challenge a program that might otherwise be seen as violating WTO rules.
Anand Sharma, India's Minister for Commerce, Industry and Textiles, is a tough negotiator, and he was successful in his efforts in getting his counterparts to abandon their earlier insistence on a clear time limit to this exception to the rules.
We are not sure what to make of Minister Wirjawan's strong support for the result. Does it reflect an Indonesian interest in a public stockholding program like India's? Or is he simply applying Alexander Pope's dictum - "Whatever IS, is RIGHT." - to the final Bali package? If the latter, we would respectfully disagree. The peace clause in the package was a high price to pay for an agreement in Bali. It may have been worth it. Indeed, we think it was worth it. But it is still regrettable that such a price was exacted, especially since no peace clause would have been necessary if the issue were only food for the poor.
Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that there is still work to be done on the Bali package. As the explanatory materials on the WTO website explain:
"The text adopted in Bali is not final, although the substance will not change. It will be checked and corrected to ensure the language is legally correct, aiming for the General Council to adopt it by 31 July 2014."
We assume that in the interim the Bali language will also get a thorough airing by legislative leaders and others as they try to weigh the significance of last week's agreements.
On Trade Facilitation. Here with think Minister Wirjawan's praise is right on the mark. As the WTO background note explains:
"The trade facilitation decision is a multilateral deal to simplify customs procedures by reducing costs and improving their speed and efficiency. It will be a legally binding agreement and is one of the biggest reforms of the WTO since its establishment in 1995."
Even from America's West Coast, the trip to Bali is a long one. For most of it, we had a window seat and spent a long time looking at winglets like this one:
Ours were on the China Airlines' Boeing 747-400s that flew us across the Pacific and back. They are not a bad metaphor for trade facilitation. We don't know all of the elements of the trade facilitation agreement. And we certainly do not fully understand the complex physics, the swirling vortices, of flight. But in broad terms we know what winglets do and what the trade facilitation agreement does. They reduce drag. Big time.
