Inside US Trade | November 9, 2001
The U.S. has vowed to fight at the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting at Doha to postpone a decision on whether to re-negotiate disciplines on antidumping and countervailing measures, but has not ruled out a proposal from the European Union for general language that would call for negotiations on rules without a specific reference to re-opening the antidumping and subsidies agreements.
In a Nov. 2 briefing in Washington, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Dorothy Dwoskin, the head of USTR's WTO office, told members of the business community they could expect to see the current text on WTO rules pushed back substantially during ministerial talks that kick off today in Doha, Qatar, according to informed sources.
One option is an approach used to launch the Uruguay Round, which would skirt a direct mention of the dumping and subsidies agreements and instead use more general language. According to language floated late last month by the European Union to the U.S. and other major trading partners, WTO members would identify issues to be addressed and make specific negotiating proposals before deciding whether to actually begin negotiations at the 2003 ministerial.
The U.S. signaled informally to the European Union during preparations for Doha that its proposal was not acceptable. The U.S. was cool to the proposal because of concerns from U.S. advocates of agriculture and intellectual property rights who feared the language could be the basis for re-opening the Agreements on Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Measures and on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
However, sources inside and outside the U.S. government have stressed that the option proposed by the EU has not been completely ruled out, a point reiterated by Dwoskin last week. Japan, meanwhile, has rejected the EU proposal because it is not specific enough with respect to dumping, according to an informed source.
In the Nov. 2 briefing, Dwoskin stressed that the U.S. would prefer a "staged approach" on trade remedy, which would involve first a discussion of whether U.S. trading partners were applying trade remedy laws in a transparent and fair fashion, and put off a decision to negotiate until a later date. She said the Administration was "not enthusiastic" about agreeing this week to negotiate on these rules, even if negotiations are slated to start at a later date, sources said.
The U.S. position has not formally presented its position on trade remedy negotiations, but one difference between what the U.S. is seeking and the EU draft proposes is that the U.S. only foresees a discussion of the issue over the next two years. In contrast, the EU wants members to use that time to present negotiating proposals on trade remedy issues, and have negotiations get further guidance at the 2003 WTO ministerial.
The Oct. 27 version of the WTO draft declaration calls for negotiations to "clarify and improve" disciplines under the WTO Antidumping and Subsidies Agreements, without specifying when those negotiations would begin. It calls for an "initial phase" to those negotiations in which members would identify what specific improvements to current disciplines they are seeking.
That language is already a step in the direction of the U.S. from earlier drafts, and has been characterized by proponents of renegotiating WTO rules as the minimum they could accept.
The U.S. commitment to this two-stage approach reflects an acknowledgement on the part of the Administration that it will not be politically possible to launch negotiations without some give from the U.S. in the area of trade remedy, these sources said. One other aim of the staged approach is to draw proponents of strengthening WTO disciplines on trade remedy into a substantive discussion where they believe the current disciplines fall short.
The EU proposal is for members to endorse negotiations aimed at "improving, clarifying and strengthening, as appropriate, the existing WTO rules." It mentions specifically negotiations on disciplines regarding unfair trade while maintaining the basic principles and concepts of such rules, avoiding possible protectionist abuse and taking into account the needs of developing and least developed country participants. The proposal also states that countries should consider the proposals on rules changes presented in the implementation context, a reference to a list of outstanding demands from developing countries.
On investment and competition, the message from U.S. negotiators is that while the U.S. generally supports negotiations in those areas, it will not expend political capital to get agreement on them. Dwoskin signaled to business representatives that the U.S. would be just as happy without negotiations in these areas, sources said. But it was likely to agree to a modest agenda on these key EU demands for the sake of holding together the base of support for the overall negotiations, she said.
A senior U.S. official also hinted at this position last week, saying that the U.S. would be satisfied with a more limited "market access" round, but that compromises would be necessary in some areas (Inside U.S. Trade, Nov. 2, p. 8).
Sources said the U.S. is also not likely to seek further changes to language in the draft declaration on the environment, believing that the Harbinson draft had balanced EU demands for negotiations with developing countries' insistence that the WTO is not a proper forum for a discussion of environmental rules in a fair way. The paragraph on environment in the draft declaration refers issues such as the nexus between the WTO and multilateral environmental agreements and eco-labelling to the Committee on Trade and Environment for further study.
U.S. agriculture groups favored earlier draft language which assigned the issue of precaution to the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade for study rather than the Committee on Trade and the Environment, but U.S. negotiators do not see this as a stumbling block because the outcome is more or less the same: more study that defers any negotiations in that area.
U.S. farmers and food processors are more concerned that the EU may be successful in its bid to include its rules proposal in the declaration that would open the door for it to table negotiating proposals on precaution.
Dwoskin said tariffs is another area the U.S. will push to have changed, specifically to remove language that targets tariff peaks and tariff escalation, which it uses to protect import sensitive products, according to informed sources. Tariff escalation refers to the practice of increasing tariffs relative to the degree of processing of a particular item.Inside US Trade:
