EU doubts on trade round backing in US By Guy de Jonquières
Dwindling domestic support for free trade and internal political difficulties may stop the US backing the launch this year of a comprehensive world trade round, a confidential European Commission paper says.
The paper, submitted last week by Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner, to his 19 Brussels colleagues, says the US approach is "negative" and is the biggest obstacle to EU efforts to win international support for an ambitious negotiating agenda.
The paper is the latest in a series of recent EU criticisms of US trade policy. Romano Prodi, EU Commission president, is due to meet US President Bill Clinton in 10 days to try to forge a joint EU-US stance on trade before the World Trade Organisation holds its ministerial meeting in Seattle next month.
A spokesman for Charlene Barshefsky, US trade representative, said Washington was fully committed to an ambitious round. Progress would be achieved through international co-operation, "not by trading charges and casting aspersions", he said.
He said Mr Lamy and Ms Barshefsky, who met in Washington on Friday for the first time since Mr Lamy took office last month, had had "very positive and constructive" talks.
The Commission paper, drafted before Mr Lamy left for the US, says: "The traditional consensus for liberal trade has vanished in the US, and instead domestic politics and a vociferous NGO lobby is forcing the administration to take a conservative, even negative, line on further negotiations.
"It remains to be seen whether the US will be able to resolve these internal difficulties sufficiently to support or acquiesce in the launch of a truly comprehensive round reflecting the interests of all WTO members."
The paper said the US and some other agricultural product exporting countries wanted a "market access-only" round, centred on agriculture and industrial tariffs, that would exclude the broader objectives sought by the EU and issue important for developing countries.
The paper claimed the EU's approach had enabled it to seize leadership in the WTO and was supported by Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland and several other European and Latin American countries.