Despite efforts between Monday and Tuesday to resolve the SSM issue using different formulations — including a proposal by Lamy and another one by the European Union — the US rejected these saying SSM would disrupt normal trade rather than protect poor farmers. Some agricultural exporting countries like Uruguay and Paraguay, too, said SSM would hurt their interests.

Meanwhile, India was backed by China and around 100 other countries at a crucial juncture in the talks when India suffered a setback as Brazil broke ranks with other developing country allies in this aspect due to its interests in the farm-export business.

China had said it would not offer any concessions on special products (SPs farm products that are subjected to minimum or no duty cuts) and SSMs as these directly affect the livelihood of its poor farmers. It wanted to demarcate rice, cotton and sugar as SPs. On SSM, India turned down a WTO proposal under which developing countries could impose additional safeguard duties only if the import surge is 40% more than the average of previous three years.

India had told the WTO that if developing countries were forced to wait till a 40% rise in imports, it would wreak havoc on the livelihood of the most vulnerable farmers due to cheap farm imports from the rich world. India also demanded that the additional safeguard duties that it should be allowed to impose on such imports should be above the Uruguay Round-bound levels (tariffs that were committed to at the Uruguay Round) as the present proposal of 15% additional duty would not be enough to curb such import surges and price declines.

... contd.