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TWN Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Mar26/26) TWN
WTO MC14 Update No. 1 Kuala Lumpur, 24 March (Goh Chien Yen*) Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble, the trade minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and minister-facilitator on incorporation of the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA) at the WTO's 14th Ministerial Conference, issued a restricted information note on March 24 laying out how the agreement would be discussed and adopted on March 28. Trade envoys who have seen the restricted document say it reads less like a plan for deliberation than a schedule for confirmation. Mr Bramble, they note, appears to take for granted that the IFDA will be added to the WTO's Annex 4 list of plurilateral agreements. That assumption sits uneasily with the facts. The IFDA has never secured consensus. India blocked it at a General Council meeting in 2016, and New Delhi has opposed it at every turn since, including at the 12th and 13th ministerial conferences. Other members have also raised concerns about how this might undermine consensus decision-making and multilateralism and create an unsavoury precedent for future plurilateral agreements. Despite this, the Minister-Facilitator appears to have thrown his weight behind the IFDA, said a trade envoy who spoke on condition of anonymity. According to Mr Bramble's note, he will open with introductory remarks and a summary of consultations held on the margins of MC14. Ministers and heads of delegation will then be invited to make interventions of no more than three minutes. After that, the minister-facilitator said he would "seek to ascertain" whether delegations "are in a position to join the consensus" on the draft ministerial decision. The IFDA fight is also entangled with a larger battle over how the WTO makes decisions. WTO reform discussions that have been taking place in Geneva introduced the concept of "responsible consensus," a formulation that to its detractors, amounts to permission to override holdouts. The United States, in its latest WTO proposal WT/GC/W/998, 23 March 2026 has gone further, seeking what amounts to an open gateway for plurilateral agreements by proposing to set aside Articles IX and X of the WTO Agreement, which govern the organisation's decision-making and amendment procedures. Mr Bramble acknowledged in his note that the session would also be "aimed at determining whether any differences can be addressed in a manner that would permit action by consensus under Article X:9 of the WTO Agreement." But whether such differences can actually be resolved remains an open question. People familiar with the negotiations caution that if the facilitator attempts to push the agreement through without genuine consensus, the fallout could shake MC14. *With inputs from the TWN delegation at MC14, Yaounde, Cameroon
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