U.S. Sets Out Mileposts for Successful Completion of WTO Round
Speaking February 14 in Geneva at a key meeting of the WTO Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), the group overseeing the negotiations, Allgeier set out a series of "intermediate goals" for successful conclusion.
Allgeier said that negotiators need to complete an "endgame document" by December 2005 when trade ministers from the 148 WTO members are scheduled to meet in Hong Kong. To achieve that, they will need to "be far along" in the development of that document by the summer break at the end of July, he said.
"We are very pleased at this sense -- that is shared very widely -- that we need to complete the round successfully by 2006," Allgeier told reporters after the meeting.
"People understand that that means that by Hong Kong we have got to have what we call an 'endgame document,'" he said. "By July, people are going to have to feel confident that all the issues are structured in a way that they are moving to that Hong Kong point."
Negotiators gathered in Geneva February 14 for a stocktaking on progress on the negotiations, formally called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).
It was the first full gathering of Doha negotiators since a core group of trade ministers representing some 25 countries and trading blocs -- including the United States, the European Union, Canada, Brazil and India -- met in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and pledged to speed up the negotiations' pace.
Allgeier told the TNC that completing the Doha Agenda within the next two years will be a "huge challenge" but can be achieved "if we all intensify our efforts and maintain a strong pace throughout the period of negotiations."
Progress by the end of July is especially important, he said, because after the summer break negotiators have essentially only two months left to work before the Hong Kong meeting.
Allgeier described the "endgame document" as a text that would provide modalities, or specific details and time frames, in the areas of agriculture and nonagricultural market access (NAMA), "including the various formulae and the necessary numbers."
He cautioned negotiators not to expect each separate area of the negotiations to progress "in lock step" with the others. "We will have to avoid the temptation to suggest that movement in one area for now isn't possible because we haven't' seen enough in some other area," he said. "Each negotiation will have its own rhythm."
Allgeier said the Bush administration is committed to meeting the intermediate goals as well as to achieving a final agreement in 2006, which he called an essential part of a strategy to promote economic expansion and development globally.
Launched at Doha, Qatar, in 2001, the negotiations languished until negotiators in Geneva in July 2004 reached agreement on a framework for conducting the negotiations on reforming trade in agriculture, manufactured goods and services, and streamlining customs procedures.
That framework agreement resolved some of the decades-old obstacles to agriculture reform, but many obstacles remain. Allgeier indicated to developing country members, that they now have to show how they are going to reduce barriers to agricultural trade if they want developed countries to reduce domestic support payments to farmers.
On industrial goods, or NAMA, Allgeier reiterated that the United States wants to consider what is called a "Swiss formula" to reduce high tariffs much more sharply than low tariffs. A Swiss formula would produce a narrow range of final tariff rates and set a maximum top rate. Allgeier said the United States is willing to accept somewhat different reduction rates for developed and developing countries.
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