The June 19, 2007, meeting in Potsdam, Germany, between the United States,
European Union, Brazil and India is being viewed by some as the last hope to
move the deadlocked Doha round of trade talks ahead.
“We’re really hoping we can move the ball forward, and ideally move it forward dramatically,” US Trade Representative Susan Schwab told Reuters in an interview. “The United States is committed to doing our share and then some,” to reach a final deal in the talks, she said.
Schwab hopes that the “contours of a deal” will emerge that can be put forward to the wider WTO membership.
Any breakthrough must include new market openings for services and manufacturing, in addition to cutting agricultural subsidies and tariffs, Schwab added.
The United States has proposed cutting its maximum WTO allowance for trade-distorting domestic subsidies by 53%, to $ 22.5 billion. Many developing countries are looking to halve that amount.
The US wants the EU and advanced countries to make deeper cuts in their farm tariffs. But the EU wants to exclude many ‘sensitive products’ from deep tariff cuts, and developing countries such as India also want to exclude ‘special products’ from any tariff cut (see earlier report ‘Developing country groupings stand firm on market access’).
Negotiators have been working to identify those agricultural products caught between foreign demands for increased market access and domestic demands for protection, but there are still big gaps over how those products should be handled.
June 16, 2007
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