A new documentary on the World Trade Organization has confirmed that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has assured top EU and Chinese leaders that Congress will confirm the emerging WTO Doha Round Agreement. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said Monday, "the Doha negotiations have made more progress than people realize. While everybody has said that the talks are failing they have in fact been moving forward and we nearly have a deal on the key issues." US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that the Second WTO Agreement will come from Geneva in the next four to six weeks, just in time for the US elections. Congressmen on both sides of the aisle will benefit if the WTO confirmation vote does not come up as a debate question, or worse a campaign issue. Regardless of the expiration of Presidential Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, Congress is set to confirm the deal, as quietly as possible, with a majority of Republican votes and a sizable minority of Democrat votes. Being held to account for their unprecedented abdication of sovereignty could seriously hurt the campaigns of candidates seeking the Republican Presidential Nomination, or Senator Clinton's campaign for that matter. However, Ambassador Susan Schwab is confident that once the EU and US resolve their dispute with India and Brazil the final Doha Agreement will coast through Congress.
In Geneva, World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy stated last week that the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit jump started the Doha Round talks and that this week's pivotal Industrial Tariffs (also called Non-Agricultural Market Access) negotiations might just complete the six-year-long negotiation in time to get the Second WTO Agreement through Congress before the "US loses 'negotiating strength' due to the upcoming presidential election." "What he meant was that Brazil, India, Europe and America are bound to agree to some symbolic tariff and subsidy reduction schedules (which, incidentally, they will likely ignore and debate in lengthy WTO court proceedings) in order to send the expansive and conclusive agreement to Congress to be ratified while the necessary majority is guaranteed," according to Craig McClurkin of California-Kentucky Collaborative Films.
Director-General Lamy declared a recess in negotiations in July, following presentation of the NAMA Negotiations Framework proposal. Following the August vacation, the recent APEC conference was key for the WTO. Besides getting most of the world's industrialized countries to come to terms with New Zealand's WTO Ambassador Crawford Falconer's July NAMA plan, the APEC summit yielded an obligatory climate agreement. It was a climate treaty with such a low and inevitably reachable standard that many ministers admitted publicly that it was a joke. It was a stinging reminder that, like the first WTO agreement of 1995, the Doha agreement will have no environmental standards - not to mention labor or human rights standards.
California-Kentucky Collaborative Films is a non-profit news documentary production firm. Its documentary Down to the Wire; The WTO Doha Round followed the WTO from inside and up close with the highest officials since 2003. The program has aired on Kentucky Educational Television and will air on other affiliates this year.
Sources for this release are on video at www.wtodoc.com or will be provided in response to email inquiries.