India, China, South Africa and Venezuela have teamed up against the US allegation that emerging economies are reaping benefits from exemptions meant for poor nations.In a joint proposal to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) last week, the countries highlighted how the US violated norms to impose import restrictions, sought exceptions to give higher subsidy to its corn, wheat, cotton and rice farmers , and gained from cross-border royalty flows on intellectual property rights.Accusing the US of being “profoundly disingenuous”, they said it is “inaccurate of the US to assert that all rules have applied only to a few (developed countries)” as the country itself has benefited from “reversed” special and differential treatment WTO allows special provisions for developing countries, called special and differential treatment (S&DT) such as longer time periods to implement agreements and commitments, measures to increase trading opportunities, provisions to safeguard their trade interests and support to build capacity to handle disputes and implement technical standards.According to the proposal, advanced countries are at an advantage due to developing countries’ capacity constraint, lack of negotiating capacity, limited government budgets, and paucity of coordinating capacity at an institutional level.“In contrast, it is the developed members that have reaped substantial benefits by seeking and obtaining flexibilities in areas of interest to them; a form of reversed S&DT,” said the 39-page proposal, which will be discussed at the multilateral body next week.“There have been exceptions for developed nations which show that the gap between the two sets of countries has widened over time. The mother provision in WTO is to reduce this gap. Some of these exceptions are glaring,” said an official aware of the details.The paper has referred to an UNCTAD assessment, which says that the developed members’ obligations to their developing peers exist only in the form of “best endeavour clauses”.Highlighting the need for special provisions for the developing countries, they said that in 2016, the perfarmer subsidy in the US was 70 times that in China and 45 times that in India. The average farm size in the US is 134 times that in India.“We expect some other countries to join in to show how unfair the US has been,” the official said. Similarly, developed countries have reserved more subsidy tools and policy space and is evident in the market access area as the average bound rate (cap on tariffs) of developed nations at 39% is 2.4 times that of the Article XII Group at 16.4%. Article XII group comprises countries which joined the WTO after 1995 but excludes the EU and the least-developed countries.