US Trade Representative Susan Schwab blaming India and China at press briefing
31 Jul 2008
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that five out of seven countries in the G7 had accepted the Lamy package put forward last Friday night, and implied that these two countries (India and China) had blocked the WTO talks in Geneva from success.
She said it was "distressing" for the US to find itself without a Doha Round agreement. The provision on the scope of a special safeguard mechanism in WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy's compromise package, which according to her deadlocked the negotiations, would have "done the trick".
Schwab was speaking at a media briefing Wednesday morning following the collapse of the WTO Geneva talks the previous evening.
She said that "tremendous progress" was made over the last week in bringing clarity to aspects of the Doha Round package in agriculture, manufactured goods and services. "We've probably moved the ball further forward in the last ten days than we have in the last eight years."
Schwab said on Friday, we really thought we had the makings of a deal. According to her, five of the seven countries in the "G7 leadership group" were prepared to accept the proposal put forward by Director-General Pascal Lamy. Unfortunately "we weren't able to capitalize on that."
She said the negotiations ultimately deadlocked on the scope of a so-called safeguard mechanism. She said that there was such a provision in the Friday compromise and "it would have done the trick. The provision would have addressed the legitimate concerns and needs of those worried about their subsistence farmers and livelihood of farmers in the event of surges of agricultural products."
"And yet, there were others who demanded more, and more included a tool to close markets," she said, adding that "it would have been a very sad commentary on a development round if the conclusion had resulted in higher barriers to trade leaving the round than those we had coming in. And quite honestly, there were some advocating that the safeguard mechanism be designed in such a way that that would have been the outcome."
She said that the issues like the trigger (in the SSM) are not just numerical debates, and those have to do with how should it be for a developing country to close its market to other developing countries, and how easy should it be for "a developing country, a recently acceded member of the WTO" to roll back or take back tariff concessions it made in its WTO accession negotiations.
What the US remains committed to is a safeguard mechanism that distinguishes between the legitimate need to address exceptional situations involving sudden damaging import surges and "a mechanism that could be abused and set back the trading system for decades to come."
She said that the irony is that all of this debate about how easy or hard it should be to raise barriers to food imports took place in the context of a global food crisis, adding that "when the last thing we should be talking about and negotiating about, or even thinking about is raising barriers to trade in food."
The USTR acknowledged that there were other important things on the table as yet unresolved such as cotton, subsidies to over-fishing, environmental goods and services, and aid-for-trade. She believed the will was there to address those. She said the US stood by its offers, and that it had put significant offers on the table.
She pointed to three factors in terms of how the issue evolves and how it is addressed - political, policy issues and practical issues. She set aside the political factors, saying that this wasn't really a political discussion. On the policy issue, she asked under what circumstances should a country be able go above its pre-Doha bindings. "Under what circumstances do you allow countries pretty much to violate one of the basic tenets of the GATT and now WTO, which is bindings."
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Source: Third World Network
Schwab was speaking at a media briefing Wednesday morning following the collapse of the WTO Geneva talks the previous evening.
She said that "tremendous progress" was made over the last week in bringing clarity to aspects of the Doha Round package in agriculture, manufactured goods and services. "We've probably moved the ball further forward in the last ten days than we have in the last eight years."
Schwab said on Friday, we really thought we had the makings of a deal. According to her, five of the seven countries in the "G7 leadership group" were prepared to accept the proposal put forward by Director-General Pascal Lamy. Unfortunately "we weren't able to capitalize on that."
She said the negotiations ultimately deadlocked on the scope of a so-called safeguard mechanism. She said that there was such a provision in the Friday compromise and "it would have done the trick. The provision would have addressed the legitimate concerns and needs of those worried about their subsistence farmers and livelihood of farmers in the event of surges of agricultural products."
"And yet, there were others who demanded more, and more included a tool to close markets," she said, adding that "it would have been a very sad commentary on a development round if the conclusion had resulted in higher barriers to trade leaving the round than those we had coming in. And quite honestly, there were some advocating that the safeguard mechanism be designed in such a way that that would have been the outcome."
She said that the issues like the trigger (in the SSM) are not just numerical debates, and those have to do with how should it be for a developing country to close its market to other developing countries, and how easy should it be for "a developing country, a recently acceded member of the WTO" to roll back or take back tariff concessions it made in its WTO accession negotiations.
What the US remains committed to is a safeguard mechanism that distinguishes between the legitimate need to address exceptional situations involving sudden damaging import surges and "a mechanism that could be abused and set back the trading system for decades to come."
She said that the irony is that all of this debate about how easy or hard it should be to raise barriers to food imports took place in the context of a global food crisis, adding that "when the last thing we should be talking about and negotiating about, or even thinking about is raising barriers to trade in food."
The USTR acknowledged that there were other important things on the table as yet unresolved such as cotton, subsidies to over-fishing, environmental goods and services, and aid-for-trade. She believed the will was there to address those. She said the US stood by its offers, and that it had put significant offers on the table.
She pointed to three factors in terms of how the issue evolves and how it is addressed - political, policy issues and practical issues. She set aside the political factors, saying that this wasn't really a political discussion. On the policy issue, she asked under what circumstances should a country be able go above its pre-Doha bindings. "Under what circumstances do you allow countries pretty much to violate one of the basic tenets of the GATT and now WTO, which is bindings."
Read More...
Source: Third World Network
