WTO WASHINGTON PLANS ITS STRATEGY US expects EU support over labour
The US expects European Union support for the first time in its effort to bring labour issues under the rubric of the World Trade Organisation, Charlene Barshefsky, US trade representative said yesterday. The administration has acknowledged that it must win support from labour and environmentalists if it is to get trade negotiating authority from Congress for a new round of trade talks, to be launched in December in Seattle.
The inclusion of labour in new WTO talks is widely opposed by many developing countries. However, the US hopes that the EU, the other economic superpower, will help convince other WTO members that labour issues will not be used for protectionist purposes.
Ms Barshefsky and other administration officials spoke in advance of what was billed as a big speech on the new round by President Bill Clinton last night. He was expected to propose that the WTO create a discussion forum on labour to produce analytical work.
This has won the support of the AFL-CIO, the unions' umbrella organisation.
"It is a useful precedent to talk about labour issues," said Dan Seligman of the Sierra Club, an environmental group. "The administration will have to spend some real political capital to turn these discussions into results."
Ms Barshefsky had little to offer environmentalists beyond a proposal to eliminate fishing and farm export subsidies and tariffs on environmental products. She also proposed a committee to analyse the effects of all proposals on the environment.
She said a special NGO Day would be held one day before the Seattle trade ministerial begins on November 30. Mr Seligman said this would not deter the many groups which plan to protest against the new round. "They continue to ignore our core concern - fixing the trade rules that lower environmental and food safety standards," he said.
Gene Sperling, the president's economic adviser, said Mr Clinton's speech would launch "a drumbeat we will continue to pound until Seattle" as officials give further details on the US agenda. This would be "a new type of round", he said, because it would be completed in three years or less. It would focus on reducing tariffs and subsidies for agriculture and attempt to keep internet transactions duty free.
The "full array" of services will be on the table, along with rules that would prohibit discrimination against new technologies. The developing countries will be offered a special programme to help develop technologies. Efforts will be made to eliminate whole categories of industrial tariffs. The US has not put anti-dumping measures on the agenda. It says it wants other countries to implement their anti-dumping commitments made in the Uruguay Round first.