US for Plurilateral on TFA without India!

Speculation in Geneva has grown over lately whether some members may try to advance the TFA in a different way, with the Financial Times confirming that the US and other major trade players have been discussing the possibility of taking a “plurilateral” approach among a subset of countries should the deadlock at the WTO keep on for much longer.

“Frankly, we know that members have been talking about the other, non-multilateral options that are open to them,” the WTO Director-General Azevedo acknowledged last week.

In his intervention last week, US Ambassador Michael Punke acknowledged that the US has been analysing a range of avenues for moving the TFA forward.

“In considering options for preserving our work, the United States has been considering how best we might keep such an effort inside the WTO,” Punke said on Thursday. While the US official vaguely alluded to the possibility of a deal outside the global trade body, he made quite clear that this was not Washington’s idea of an optimal result.

“All of us have experience in negotiating outside the WTO, but this is a moment in which the preferred options, at least from a US perspective, would involve keeping trade facilitation inside this organisation and not being forced into a position considering an agreement out of it,” Punke said.

(India is not in the mega regionals, that is, Trans Atlantic and Trans Pacific Partnerships in the Making. WTO is its only hope, wrecking its own ship is not a good idea! – Ed).