India urges G20 to distinguish food security measures from coercive trade
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Milwaukee: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has called on G20 members to differentiate between the use of food and agricultural supplies as a tool of coercion and legitimate government measures aimed at protecting domestic food security.
Goyal made the remarks during a session of the G20 Trade Ministers’ Meeting in Milwaukee on the “weaponisation of food through coercive trade action”.
“Our shared objective must be to ensure that food remains a source of security, stability and cooperation,” Goyal said in a post on X after the session.
He said countries’ policies designed to meet domestic requirements and protect food security should not be treated in the same way as coercive actions targeting food supply chains.
The Indian minister’s intervention came as the US, which is hosting the two-day ministerial meeting, placed the issue among its key priorities for the G20 discussions.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said coercive trade measures involving food, agricultural products and farm inputs could have serious consequences for economies and people worldwide.
The US has identified four major workstreams for its G20 presidency: the weaponisation of food, structural excess capacity and production, the Most-Favoured-Nation principle and forced labour in global supply chains.
Greer urged G20 members to discuss contentious issues directly instead of referring them exclusively to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
“Let’s talk candidly and constructively here,” he said, arguing that years of international discussions had failed to adequately address structural problems in the global trading system.
According to Greer, the world economy has for more than a decade faced macroeconomic imbalances, excess industrial capacity, forced labour and economic coercion, while the response from major economies had largely remained limited to discussions.
He said the US expected the Milwaukee meeting to create a greater sense of urgency and generate practical action among G20 members.
The discussions place food security within a wider debate on the future of global trade rules, alongside industrial overcapacity, forced labour and the treatment of countries under the Most-Favoured-Nation principle.
(Inputs from IANS)