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U.S., EU Ministers Reaffirm Positions on WTO Negotiations

By Bruce Odessey
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- U.S. and European Union (EU) trade ministers have reaffirmed their commitment to successful conclusion of long-stalled World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations but have offered no new evidence that success is any closer.

U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman and EU Commissioner for Trade Peter Mandelson briefed reporters after their February 21-22 meetings in Washington, reiterating their positions of recent months.

Mandelson said the EU would not reconsider its agriculture proposal unless developing countries, especially emerging markets such as Brazil and India, make serious offers to cut industrial tariffs and open their markets to services.

Portman similarly said that all countries, including developing countries, need to make concessions to open their markets and that the negotiations on agriculture, industrial goods and services all must move together to make success possible in what is formally called the Doha Development Agenda, and less formally as the Doha Round.

Since the Doha negotiations were launched in 2001, progress has foundered over sensitive agricultural trade issues.  In October 2005, the United States offered sharp reductions of trade-distorting domestic support and agricultural tariffs.  (See related article.)

The subsequent offer from the EU, which has far higher subsidy and tariff levels, would result in no real increase in market access, according to most analyses.

Portman said at the briefing that the two sides remained apart on agricultural subsidies and tariffs, "but we are beginning to close some of the gaps."  He did not elaborate.

The Doha Round has a history of missed negotiating deadlines.  The next deadline, set at the December 2005 ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, requires participants to agree by April 30 on modalities -- numerical targets -- for achieving the objectives of the negotiations on agricultural and industrial tariffs.  (See WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting.)

By July 31, WTO members are supposed to submit their draft schedules for reducing the tariffs to those targets.

Conclusion of the Doha Round is set for the end of 2006, a deadline crucial for the United States, where the president's trade promotion authority (TPA) to negotiate trade agreements expires in July 2007.

Under TPA, otherwise known as fast track, Congress restricts itself to approve or reject a negotiated trade agreement, within strict time limits and without amendments.

"The U.S. and the EU are committed to progress because there's so much at stake here" in the WTO negotiations, Portman said. "All countries lose if there's a failed Doha round."

A transcript (PDF, 9 pages) of Portman's and Mandelson's briefing can be accessed at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Web site. For additional information, see USA and the WTO.