GENEVA – Failure by the United States, European Union, Brazil and India to progress on eliminating trade barriers for farm produce and manufactured goods could be fatal for the current round of global commerce talks, the World Trade Organization’s top official said Monday.
Washington must lower its agricultural subsidies further, the EU needs to ease access to its farm markets, and Brazil and India must offer deeper cuts in industrial tariffs, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said.
Divisions on these issues caused talks last month in Germany among the WTO’s four biggest powers to collapse. Failure over the next four weeks to agree on a framework for a deal could make an accord impossible for at least three years, possibly much longer, trade officials warn.
“What remains to be done is small compared to all the proposals already on the table,” Lamy told a meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council. “Reaching agreement on subsidies depends on additional concessions from the U.S. (that would be) equivalent to less than a week’s worth of trans-Atlantic trade.”
He said the EU and Japan also needed to reduce their highest farm tariffs by only a few more percentage points. Brazil, India and other emerging economies would have to offer similar cuts in their highest industrial tariffs.
The global talks known as the Doha round aim to add billions of dollars to the world economy and lift millions of people out of poverty through new trade flows. But they have struggled since their inception in Qatar’s capital six years ago, largely because of wrangling among rich and poor countries over eliminating barriers to farm trade and, more recently, industrial trade.
The U.S. and EU last month criticized India and Brazil for refusing to offer new market opportunities for manufacturing exports. The two emerging powers, in turn, blamed the impasse on U.S. reluctance to make cuts in the billions of dollars it pays annually in farm subsidies.
“For the first time we had the courage to not give in to developed economies, like the United States and the European Union,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday during an event in a Sao Paulo suburb.
Silva said a U.S. offer to limit agricultural subsidies to $17 billion was “absurd.”
“We wanted to be treated as equals,” Silva said.
Lamy said the failure by the four to find common ground “was not good news.”
“But it could be fatal if these four members do not play a constructive role in the multilateral negotiations which are now entering into a crucial stage,” he said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
