Text: Liu Qi.
In recent years, the frequent and long-term use of export restrictions by major grain exporting members of the World Organization (WTO) has had a negative impact on the stability of international food and has attracted widespread attention from the international community. The existing WTO rules stipulate how to restrain relevant acts, but due to certain ambiguities in the relevant provisions and other reasons, the current export restriction discipline is relatively lax, and members have not strictly followed the export restriction measures when implementing them. Therefore, some members strongly called on the WTO to formulate and enforce stricter export restrictions and disciplines to ensure that members reduce the adverse impact on the international agricultural market when implementing export restrictions.
1. Decades of strife – a long history.
In fact, the call for tighter export restrictions can be traced back to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) era, when the negotiation of export restrictions fluctuated with the ups and downs of the global agricultural situation, but it failed to achieve results for a long time. In the seventies of the last century, members of the net importer of agricultural products expressed strong concerns about export bans and restrictions under the framework of multilateral negotiations. With the surplus of agricultural products in the eighties of the last century, the issue was marginalized. After the start of the Doha Round of negotiations in 2001, some members called for improving the reliability of global food **, some members called for strict export restriction disciplines, some members proposed to replace export bans and restrictions with export taxes, and some members proposed that no new export restrictions and prohibitions should be introduced. During the 2008 food crisis, some members continued to call for tighter export restrictions, while opponents stressed the importance of prioritizing domestic food security. Some members felt that there was no negotiating mandate to discuss export restrictions and export taxes at all, and others stressed that special and differential treatment should be guaranteed for developing members, which has not yielded results due to the long-term tug-of-war between the two sides and the unsatisfactory overall progress of the WTO agricultural negotiations.
Second, MC12 cohesion - cultivation into positive results.
After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the international agricultural product chain has suffered a huge impact, and some members have successively introduced export bans and restrictions, which has further amplified the adverse impact, and food security has become a hot topic of international concern, and the WTO urgently needs to respond. In 2021, Singapore and 55 other members jointly issued a joint statement pledging not to impose export bans or restrictions on food purchased by the World Food Programme (WFP) for humanitarian purposes, building momentum for the outcome of export restrictions at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12). Despite the firm opposition of India and other members before the MC12, with the unremitting efforts of all parties, the MC12 finally reached the "Ministerial Decision on the Exemption of Export Bans or Restrictions on the Purchase of Food by the World Food Programme", committing not to impose export bans or restrictions on the humanitarian food procurement of the World Food Programme.
3. What MC13 will do - wait and see.
Although MC12 has produced results on export restrictions, its scope of application is very limited, and it is difficult to change the status quo that some members arbitrarily use export restrictions without WTO regulations. After the end of MC12, affected by factors such as regional tensions and frequent extreme weather events, the global grain market continued to fluctuate, and many members adopted grain export measures, further triggering market panic. In October 2023, the WTO will convene a vice-ministerial-level meeting to prepare the results for MC13. At the meeting, the parties continued to disagree on agricultural issues, but the issue of food security was highly focused. In this case, there is still uncertainty as to whether MC13 can produce export restriction results, and due to the large differences between the parties, the results on the issue of export restrictions alone may be opposed by some members; At the same time, in order to seek agricultural outcomes for MC13, it is not excluded that members will compromise and reach an outcome on issues such as transparency with relatively little disagreement, and the final situation will be known in February 2024.
Throughout the WTO negotiations, the issue of export restrictions is of great significance to food security, but it is also full of controversy. The relaxed export restriction discipline leads to the export members being free to use export restrictions, thus causing artificial panic and insufficient supply in the international grain market, which will affect the confidence of the international community in the international agricultural product market, exacerbate the fluctuation of grain, and damage the interests of importing members. At the same time, it is the natural right of members to give priority to ensuring domestic food demand, and the adoption of restrictions or prohibitions on the export of grain and other important agricultural products will help alleviate domestic supply shortages and fluctuations in emergencies, and is an important means to ensure domestic food security. How to strike a delicate balance between the two requires the joint efforts of all members to collide with sparks of wisdom in the WTO agricultural negotiations that are full of gunsmoke.
Author's Affiliation: Agricultural ** Promotion Center, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs).