Agriculture has been, and perhaps will remain for some time, a key issue in the WTO, with the power to influence negotiations, packages and the outcomes of Ministerial Conferences. It is equally sensitive, if not even more so, in the Indian context. To understand these sensitivities fully, including India’s emphasis on self-sufficiency, it is important to keep in mind the extreme shortage of food grain that the country faced in the 1950s and 1960s. It was only the success of the ‘Green Revolution’ that helped India overcome its dependence on food aid.

This study surveys French decision-making relating to trade, from summer 2002 to the Cancún WTO Ministerial. It focuses on market access issues, which by no means embrace France’s trade negotiating priorities. Following Rodrik, we assume that ‘all the political economy models provide a particular story about how organized groups or individual voters can take political action to reinforce or alleviate the income-distributional consequences of trade flows…. The conclusion in common is: trade is not free because politically influential groups can be made better off by policy interventions on trade.

This case study of Fiji explores the way in which its government and people are preparing to deal with the expected end of preferential trading relationships, and is based largely on interviews conducted in Fiji over several days in August 2004. In March 1997 the WTO Secretariat published its report of Fiji’s first review under the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM).

The United States initiated consultations with the countries alleged to be damaging or threatening its industry with the intention of invoking the transitional safeguard provisions of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC).(3) During the course of these consultations, three of the seven countries agreed to quantitative restrictions on the imported underwear that would be allowed into the United States. However, after failing to reach agreements with Costa Rica, Honduras, Thailand and Turkey, the United States in June 1995(4) introduced restrictions on the importation of cotton and man-made-fibre underwear backdated to take effect starting in March 1995.

China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, following fifteen years of difficult negotiations, was a watershed event both for the WTO and its members and for China. Chinese government officials and those who followed the progress of the negotiations over the years knew that accession would bring with it the necessity of a large number of reforms in domestic economic policies, many of which would require adapting the outlook of Chinese business establishments.

In May 2002, Chilean sanitary authorities were notified of a possible outbreak of avian influenza (AI — also known as bird flu). Until then, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) had never occurred in Chile or in any other country in South America.

In 1994 the Canadian Parliament adopted legislation to implement the Uruguay Round with virtually no opposition. The measure was easily passed by the House of Commons with a vote of 185-7. There was general acceptance that the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a necessity for Canada both to participate and to compete in the new international order. Not only did legislators believe that the WTO Agreement would enhance and facilitate Canadian exports, but there also was an expectation among parliamentarians that the new rules-based dispute settlement mechanism would act as a counter-force to US unilateralism in the international arena.

In 1994, Cambodia applied for membership of the WTO. Following the Doha Declaration of November 2001 that eased membership conditions for least developed counties, Cambodia’s membership was finally approved in September 2003 at the Cancun Ministerial Conference. However, membership did not become effective until a year later because an internal political deadlock in Cambodia after the July 2003 elections delayed ratification.

As the launching of a new multilateral round of trade negotiations was being discussed, Brazil pushed for including in the agenda ambitious goals related to market access and the reduction or elimination of export and domestic support schemes. Moreover, in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and EU-Mercosur negotiations, Brazil has presented proposals consistent with those developed in the multilateral arena. However, in the months preceding the WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancún in September 2003, an interesting process of strategy-shifting took place, involving Brazil’s stance in negotiations on agriculture.

Botswana is a founding member of the WTO; it joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1987 and opened its mission in Geneva in 2001. The mission also serves other Geneva-based UN and specialized agencies. The Ministry of Trade and Industry is responsible for foreign trade policy formulation and implementation, negotiations on bilateral agreements, licensing and regulation of domestic trade and regulation, and monitoring of domestic consumer issues. Within the Ministry, the Department of International Trade is responsible for foreign trade policy, including co-ordination of WTO negotiations.