India Draws Line on ‘Weaponisation of Food’ at G20 Trade Ministers’ Meet

India has cautioned against treating legitimate national measures to protect food security as the “weaponisation” of food, as G20 trade ministers began discussions on the use of coercive trade actions involving food and agricultural supplies. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal made the distinction during a session of the G20 Trade Ministers' Meeting in Milwaukee devoted to the “Weaponisation of Food through Coercive Trade Action”.

“Highlighted that 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 speaking at the session. He also stressed the need to distinguish between coercive actions involving food supplies and measures taken by governments to meet legitimate domestic requirements. “Also, underlined that we must clearly distinguish between the weaponisation of food supply chains and legitimate measures adopted by countries to pursue domestic policy objectives and address food-security needs,” Goyal said.

The Indian intervention came as the United States, which is hosting the G20 Trade Ministerial, placed the weaponisation of food among four major issues it wants trade ministers to address during their two-day meeting. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said coercive trade measures involving food could have serious consequences extending beyond conventional trade disputes. “First, the weaponisation of food. Coercive trade actions involving food, agricultural products, and agricultural inputs pose serious consequences for economies and the people in them,” Greer said in his opening remarks.

The issue is one of four workstreams identified by the US G20 presidency. The others are structural excess capacity and production, the Most-Favoured-Nation principle and forced labour in global supply chains. Greer called for G20 members to engage directly with difficult questions affecting the international trading system rather than leave them exclusively to discussions at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. “Typically, and too often, when difficult questions and topics arise in the G20, many around the room suggest that such discussions belong elsewhere. That they should take place in Geneva at the WTO. But Geneva is just another city on a lake. And so is Milwaukee. So, let’s talk candidly and constructively here,” Greer said.

The US trade chief said Washington believed years of discussion had failed to adequately address structural problems confronting global trade. “For more than a decade, the global economy has been beset by macroeconomic imbalances, structural excess capacity and production, forced labour, and economic coercion. And yet, the response by the world’s economies has been mostly talk,” he said. Greer said the United States wanted the Milwaukee discussions to produce greater urgency among G20 economies.

“Over the next two days, we will discuss these issues in depth, and it is my intent that we leave Milwaukee with a clearer sense of urgency and a recognition of the need for action,” he said. The exchange places food security alongside industrial overcapacity, forced labour and MFN treatment in a broader G20 debate over the rules governing international commerce. The US has described the food-related workstream as an effort to address coercive trade actions involving food, agricultural products and agricultural inputs.

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