Washington Post | By Paul Blustein, Washington Post Staff Writer
The top trade negotiators for the United States and the European Union said yesterday that they have "converged" toward an understanding on the agenda for a new round of global trade talks, removing some significant obstacles to an expansion of freer trade.
In a joint appearance on Capitol Hill, Robert B. Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, and Pascal Lamy, his European counterpart, said they are close to agreement on expanding the agenda of the talks to include investment, antitrust and environmental issues -- topics the Europeans have been pressing to include. The World Trade Organization hopes to launch the talks at a meeting of its 141 member nations in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar in November.
Disagreement among WTO members about the agenda for a new round caused a breakdown of talks in Seattle in 1999 that, along with the highly publicized anti-globalization protests there, came to symbolize the political difficulties of further reducing global barriers to trade and investment.
The United States and the EU, the largest players in the world trading system, have taken sharply different positions on the nature of a new round of talks that would follow the 1994 completion of the "Uruguay Round." Free-trade advocates have warned that unless Washington and Brussels reached an understanding they would risk another failure in November that could endanger the WTO's viability.
Yesterday's announcement does not guarantee success in Qatar. But it marked an important step toward a new round, as Zoellick, who had previously favored a round concentrated on lowering barriers to trade in services and agricultural products, said the United States was willing to expand the agenda.
The additional topics include investment -- rules protecting and governing investments by private firms across national borders -- as well as antitrust policy and environmental issues, a term that encompasses such controversial questions as the right of countries to ban foreign food products containing artificial hormones and genetically modified ingredients.
The focus now shifts to whether developing countries, which constitute three-quarters of the WTO membership, will agree on the agenda with the EU and other rich members such as Japan. Many officials of developing counties are unhappy with the current trading system, especially the high tariffs and other barriers maintained by wealthy nations that block the low-priced goods developing nations produce, including agricultural products, textiles and apparel.
Zoellick and Lamy were confronted yesterday by demands on behalf of the developing countries advanced by James D. Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, who in a meeting with the two trade ministers advanced his argument for a "development round" that would be focused on benefiting the world's poor.
After the meeting, the World Bank released a statement quoting Wolfensohn as noting that the richest nations spend more than $ 300 billion a year on subsidies for farmers, "roughly equivalent to the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa." If all wealthy countries were to grant full access in their markets to the goods exported by poor countries, he added, "the exports of the least developed countries would expand by 11 percent, with significant benefits to the poor."
In his remarks, Zoellick said "we need to be particularly sensitive to developing countries' interests as we prepare for the new round." But he added that if the poorest nations balked at going along, they would stand to lose the most, while richer countries could manage by forging bilateral or regional trade pacts.
Putting the items sought by the EU on the agenda does not mean the United States or other countries will accept the European position, but Zoellick agreed to do so to get the round underway. An "important lesson" learned at Seattle, he said, "is to avoid trying to pre-negotiate the details and the outcomes of the negotiations."
U.S. officials explained that the move was motivated in part by the hope that, by offering a broader range of issues on which Brussels might be able to score gains, Washington could increase the likelihood of extracting concessions on its most important aims, such as a reduction in European subsidies for farm exports.
"I think they understand that accommodation toward them on issues important to them means they have to show accommodation on issues of importance to us," a U.S. trade official said.Washington Post:
