Virtuoso of the trade rounds

Crawford Falconer is a keen runner.

Just as well, because when he takes over as ambassador to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva next month he will have to hit the ground running.

Negotiators are up against it.

After the Northern Hemisphere holiday season they will have, Falconer reckons, only about 10 weeks to lay the groundwork for the Hong Kong ministerial meeting in December.

Crucial political decisions will have to be made in Hong Kong if the WTO's Doha Round is to be concluded before the US Administration's negotiating authority from Congress runs out.

Falconer is a 20-year veteran of trade negotiations, described by one colleague as a virtuoso.

He takes over the key Geneva post from Tim Groser, who has resigned to stand as a National Party candidate in the general election.

In his job of chief trade negotiator with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he directs not only the multilateral Doha Round but also negotiations with the Chinese and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

He runs about 50km a week. It keeps him fit and able to cope with the jet lag from flying about 400,000km a year.

"Being able to stay in Geneva most of the time will be a real boon."

But it will take stamina, as well as skill, to cope with the demands of the intensive negotiations ahead.

Managing a multilateral trade round has become much more difficult as the WTO's membership has increased and its agenda has become more crowded.

"The interests and aspirations are much more diverse and so getting people to agree - because the whole thing moves by consensus - is that much more difficult," he said.

"But it was never easy. The Uruguay Round went through a couple of near-death experiences, but it staggered to a conclusion by the end."

This round has become bogged down since the breakthrough framework agreement in Geneva nearly a year go. That agreement included some important progress from New Zealand's point of view in European and US concessions to end export subsidies of agricultural products and to cut domestic subsidies as well.

But large blanks remain and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

Falconer says what is needed now is a clear idea on how much countries are going to open their markets for agricultural and industrial goods and for services.

The four big issues are:

* How much will the industrialised countries open up their agricultural markets? "That is numero uno, because we have no real sense of that."

* How much will all countries, but particularly the more advanced developing ones such as China, India and Brazil, open up their markets for industrial products?

* How significant a change will be made in the way anti-dumping and subsidies rules are applied?

* How ambitious will countries be on opening up their services markets?

In that list there is enough scope for the trade-offs which make multilateral trade negotiations the first, best hope for significant progress in the hardest cases, such as agriculture.

It is as much a political as an economic exercise.

"Governments say, 'Whatever the economic benefits might be we are going to have political pain in doing this deal. We have to be able to say: look, others are sharing the pain'."

For New Zealand, the concessions likely to be required are less about opening markets - we have done that already - than about formally committing to keeping them open or "binding" in the jargon.

"For services markets, it is really an issue of how much you wish to bind. I don't think realistically there are many areas, if any, where we would need to change our existing policies, given that our policies are by any international standards pretty open."

Within the context of the WTO's informal processes, New Zealand officials often play a facilitating, honest broker role.

"We don't kid ourselves. We don't have leverage really. When you are a small player without much economic influence or political weight, but you want outcomes that benefit you, if you are useful to the process generally - simply because the big guys cannot move off their positions and they need someone to help bring it together - then that enables you to be listened to a little bit more," Falconer said.

"There is always a danger that you get sucked into the process and fall in love with the role you are playing for other people, rather than your own national interest. You have got to resist that and there are checks and balances to ensure that happens."

Even though the fact the process is behind schedule and deadlines are pressing, Falconer is optimistic about the prospects.

"The Europeans are on a reform path in agriculture and I don't think their political crisis will change that. They have frozen their spending unilaterally, but they say to the US 'We are not going to bind this at the WTO if you guys do nothing. That is politically out of the question'," he said.

"I don't think we will get a result unless the US cuts its farm spending. Now that's a big political conundrum for them. The [Republican] states are farm states. But the US has a huge budgetary problem which may make them look at how much they spend on agriculture."

Crawford Falconer

Aged 51

Educated: Rongotai College, Victoria University and the London School of Economics

* Joined the then Department of Trade and Industry and was seconded to Geneva in the mid-1980s at the start of the Uruguay Round

* A trade official ever since, apart from a stint at the OECD in Paris

* Now MFAT's chief trade negotiator