Countries trying to kill Doha, says US

Countries trying to kill Doha, says US


Tim Colebatch, Cairns
July 5, 2007

SOME countries are trying to kill the Doha Round trade negotiations, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab has warned.
These countries wanted it to appear that the US was to blame because of its unwillingness to make deep cuts in farm subsidies, she said.
In an interview with The Age yesterday, Ms Schwab refused to name the countries responsible, but appeared to be talking about India, which has demanded that the US roughly halve its proposed maximum subsidy.
Ms Schwab, a career trade specialist, took over the top job last year.
Earlier, she warned that if the only consensus from the Doha Round was for cosmetic reforms that failed to provide "meaningful market access", she could not sell the agreement to the US Congress, which must ratify any deal.
Ms Schwab is in Cairns for a meeting of trade ministers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, which opens today.
Australian Trade Minister Warren Truss said a key task of the meeting would be to discuss how to make best use of the short time left to get a deal in the Doha Round, which appears to be sinking.
Ms Schwab told The Age the last opportunity for a Doha Round deal in this phase now rested with the chairman of the committees on agriculture and manufacturing, who would submit their proposed texts this month, for members to adopt or reject. If those texts were rejected, the Doha Round "doesn't bear considering".
"I believe if those texts are low-ambition texts, then we're in deep trouble," she said. "The US, like a lot of our trading partners, would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to sell at home a low-level-of-ambition Doha outcome. We need meaningful market access."
While the US was still committed to a deal, other countries were not, she said. She slammed a proposal by the G20 group of developing countries, with India as the main spokesman, that the US lower its farm subsidy ceiling from the $US22.5 billion ($A26.28 billion) it had offered to something in the "low teens" (in $US billion), or even less.
India, supported by many developing countries, argues that it is hypocritical for the US to demand big cuts in tariffs protecting manufacturers in developing countries when it wanted a subsidy ceiling roughly twice as much as the $US11 billion spent on farm supports last year.
But Ms Schwab said US farm subsidies had fallen only because of high prices on world markets, particularly for corn, which had risen almost above the level of price supports. In five of the past nine years, she said, the US had spent more than the ceiling it was proposing.
"And honestly, some of the countries that are doing this are doing this because they really want to kill the Doha Round, and they want to blame somebody else," she said. "I'm absolutely convinced of that.
"I'm not naming names. But honestly, if you are lacking ambition in Doha, and you want somebody else to take the blame for it, then you identify a target for another country or group of countries that you know they can never meet."