Green trade rules are ‘biased’, says Indian minister

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India’s commerce minister has said that trade policy has no role in fighting climate change, dealing a blow to hopes of tackling global warming through trade deals.

Piyush Goyal told the Financial Times that trade and the environment “are two separate issues” and the rich world’s attempts to embed sustainability into agreements were “biased”.

“Trade has nothing to do with that,” he said in an interview at the World Trade Organization’s biennial conference, where governments are discussing how to green trade flows and abolish subsidies for overfishing.

Goyal said that other UN institutions were best placed to tackle climate change and labour standards, such as the Framework Convention on Climate Change and International Labour Organization.

“The world has prepared different multilateral organisations and they should be respected,” he said. “They should be allowed to do their job.” 

Countries that industrialised through fossil fuels should pay to arrest climate change, Goyal said, evoking the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which developed countries promised to finance developing countries to cut fossil fuel use and adapt to climate change.

A 2009 commitment to spend $100bn per year for developing countries by 2020 has not been met.

“All the environmental damage that has been done in the past has still not been made up for. What about that?” he asked.

“Before we add new environmental issues, let’s first sort out who is responsible for the environmental degradation. Certain promises were made in Paris. They have to be delivered upon.”

India accounts for 17 per cent of the world’s population but produces just 3 per cent of emissions, he said.

Goyal attacked unilateral EU trade measures trying to protect the environment, saying: “There is clearly bias, discrimination and unfairness.”  

They include the carbon border adjustment mechanism; a tax on imports of products such as steel that produce high emissions; and a deforestation law that would force importers of commodities such as rubber and coffee to prove they were not grown on land recently cleared of trees. 

He said Delhi had not decided whether to bring a WTO complaint about the measures. 

Goyal, who is under pressure over his tough stance at the ministerial conference, where he has threatened a veto in several areas, hit back at the US for its decision to hamstring the WTO’s dispute resolution function.

Washington has blocked the appointment of arbitrators to appeal panels, which means countries that lose a case can simply ignore the judgment by appealing into the void. 

“I have many complaints that I need to be addressed by the WTO,” he said. “I have no recourse to justice. So until we have a functioning appellate body all other decisions have no meaning.”

India is itself obstructing almost single-handedly two other negotiations. It insists on retaining a publicly funded food stockpile system, stalling talks on agricultural subsidies.

There have been widespread protests by farmers in India ahead of elections, raising the stakes for Goyal.

India also wants to end an agreement not to impose duties on electronic goods such as film streaming and social media. Goyal said this favours big tech companies over SMEs who need tariff protection to grow. The ecommerce moratorium is usually extended from meeting to meeting. India, backed by Indonesia and South Africa, is refusing to do so, although most WTO members favour the move.

“I have start-ups. I have technology professionals who are happy to produce domestic technology. I have ecommerce platforms in India. But should I not be supporting them? Is it the right only of a few select big tech companies to do ecommerce?” he asked.

The conference is scheduled to finish on Thursday but is expected to run over as delegations haggle over the moratorium.

Goyal said India was ready to close a trade deal with the UK “immediately” but London had not taken a decision.

Talks with the EU continued but India would “absolutely not” accept any sustainability commitments, which are a critical demand of Brussels.