The United States and the European Union will hold high-level talks July 16-17 aimed at jump-starting efforts to launch a new round of trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization later this year. Officials said July 13 that European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy will arrive in Washington, D.C., late July 16 for the talks and proceed directly to a meeting with his American counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick.
Lamy will also meet separately July 17 with U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans.
Officials said that Zoellick and Lamy, also July 17, will meet with World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn in an apparent bid to demonstrate their willingness to address the needs of developing nations in the WTO negotiations.
The United States and the EU, along with member nations of the WTO, have been seeking to agree on an agenda for a new round of WTO trade negotiations in advance of the next WTO ministerial meeting, scheduled to be held in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 9-13.
Mixed Reports of Progress in Talks
Reports of progress in the discussions have been mixed. U.S. and EU officials were upbeat in their assessment of the discussions at a symposium in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, with the U.S. ambassador to the WTO, Linnet Deily, saying, for instance, that she was "cautiously optimistic" that the new WTO negotiations could be launched in Qatar.
But the chairman of the WTO's ruling General Council said July 13 that WTO member countries were "still too far away" from agreement on the agenda for a new round.
"We have 55 normal working days left before Doha," said the chairman, Stuart Harbinson, of Hong Kong. "It could not be clearer that we have very little time indeed left. Everyone is working very hard, but on too many of the issues before us we are still too far away from any significant convergence of positions."
Harbinson said that progress since June 25-26, when senior officials from WTO member countries met in Geneva to discuss preparations for Doha, have "frankly, not been sufficient...We still seem to be lacking that sense of the positive connections among issues which is necessary to arrive at a generally acceptable package to put it bluntly, we need to be developing now a sense of the necessary accommodations and trade-offs among positions."
Bilateral Disputes Will Also Be Discussed
Officials, meanwhile, said July 13 that Zoellick and Lamy will also not be able to avoid discussing various outstanding bilateral trade disputes in their talks the week of July 16, including long-standing differences over steel trade and tax breaks for U.S. exporters. Other sources said that Lamy, for instance, may be prepared to announce that the EU will have no choice but to file formal dispute settlement complaints with the WTO over U.S. restrictions on steel imports from Europe, despite a WTO ruling against the United States in the so-called British Steel case dealing with the application of countervailing duties after state-owned companies have been privatized.
Efforts to resolve the dispute, including a meeting in Brussels between senior U.S. and EU trade officials the week of June 25, have proved difficult.
Lamy warned of possible WTO action against the United States last month.
The chief EU trade negotiator last visited the United States in June, when he met mainly with members of Congress while Zoellick was in China attending a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
By Gary G. Yerkey
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