Rough trade?

Chairman Mao waves an arm in salute with each passing second on the face of a novelty watch – about the only sign of communism evident in Hong Kong.
The influence is more in the opposite direction as Hong Kong’s free market ways spread across the China, with which it has been rejoined. For this reason, the World Trade Organisation saw in Hong Kong a model setting for the meeting of 150 governments to negotiate the opening up of markets to trade.
I was present as an ‘observer’ on the Irish government delegation, and as an advocate for developing country interests. That meant I spent less time out on the streets among the thousands of protesters, and more time sitting in slow-moving debates among negotiators.
Or walking the endless corridors of the Croke Park-scale convention centre seeking information on progress in any of the myriad meetings happening around the clock.
For the first four days it was like dancing to the traditional air ‘Walls of Limerick’. Negotiators approached each other and withdrew; assumed well rehearsed positions; restated old ones and flung accusations. Little progress by any definition.
That was until the Friday afternoon, when, with just 48 hours remaining, the pace suddenly shifted inside the talks on opening up service industries.
The Korean chairperson had heard from 41 countries. As just 15 ‘expressed concerns’ with the text (i.e. rejected it) he proposed it would be accepted. This in an organisation which says it works by consensus.
Tempers flared. The Dominican Republic was the first of several to point out that, when Malawi had spoken, it was representing the Group of 90 developing countries. Therefore the chair should revise his mathematics.
Some European negotiators, in sombre mood, feared the talks, now charged with anger, would collapse, as they had two years earlier in Cancun, Mexico. But older hands said keep the nerve – in negotiations with such high stakes this is the essential process before agreement.
Suddenly, it was game on! The dance had stopped and the horse-trading began in earnest.
Compatriots of the chair of the services talks, several hundred Korean farmers, broke through the security barriers and managed to enter the building.
They provided much of the media spectacle for the week – with stunts such as jumping into the sea to swim into the convention centre, provoking the inevitable police intervention. These farmers were protesting against opening up markets, while inside the negotiations their trade minister was using his position in the chair to push in the opposite direction.
Migrant women employed in Hong Kong as domestic workers were also well represented among the protesters. They argued that is not fair just to liberalise trade in rich country products, if you don’t simultaneously allow developing country workers freer movement and better conditions.
In the end, Hong Kong did produce a result for the WTO. It had failed to get one from two of its previous fixtures. So the institution has been saved for the moment.
The outcome will of course mean the loss of agricultural jobs in Ireland. It will accelerate the trend in Ireland for small farmers to leave the land and large farms to expand. We will go further down the agri-business route and have fewer family farms.
So why did the Irish government sign up to the Hong Kong deal?
Precisely because it got what it wanted in the services talks, and in the manufacturing talks. Yes, farm jobs will be lost, but many more jobs will be created in Ireland in services and manufacturing. Irish firms will enjoy new opportunities in Latin America and Asia – opportunities to export or to invest. Yes, it is a cold mathematic outcome. But not one that many Irish politicians will articulate in public.
Because trade talks are not about maths. They are about power. Despite the consensus method, the Group of 90 developing countries know that they cannot stop the train. Eighteen of them were to have their debt cancellation packages decided at the IMF in the very week after the Hong Kong talks – imagine just how free they felt to block a consensus.
The sad part is that those who will gain at the expense of Irish farmers are not the poor producers of countries such as Malawi. Rather, it will be the agricultural multinational companies based in Brazil, Chile or New Zealand.
The deal does include some small gains for the poorest countries, mostly in agriculture. But what a price they have to pay in exposing their local companies to international competition. And this was promised to be a ‘Development Round’ of talks.
Hong Kong, with its futuristic architecture, gives a glimpse of the century ahead. You can walk through the city on a web of elevated streets, avoiding the bustle below. In this it echoes the WTO's vision for the world – in which the rich can design the products, own the brands and the factories that produce them. The bustle will go on below.