Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 13 • Number 37 • 28th October 2009

US ‘Committed’ to Doha Deal: EU Trade Commissioner

Discuss this articleShare your views with other visitors, and read what they have to say

The US is determined to work towards a successful conclusion of the WTO’s Doha Round of trade talks, EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton said during a trip to Washington earlier this week.

“I think first of all this administration is committed to open trade. It is committed to trying to resolve the Doha round,” Ashton said in a speech on Monday at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, according to a report from Reuters.

“I’d like also to say, but I’m not certain, that we’ll see significant breakthroughs in the next few weeks and months. But I do think there’s no question in my mind that the energy and commitment of the new [US Trade Representative] is absolutely there,” she added.

In a speech to the US Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Ashton said that both Brussels and Washington must push for a speedy conclusion to the WTO’s Doha Round negotiations in Washington this week.

“The stakes are high, but the time has come to show our cards,” Ashton told the business group.

A multilateral trade deal would add US$ 220 billion to the global economy at no added cost to the troubled taxpayer, Ashton said. Trade is “the engine of global growth,” she added, noting that it would be in everyone’s interest to conclude the Doha Round for the sake of global economic recovery. Ashton asserted that the EU and the US’s goals in the round are aligned, since they both want gains from market access and strive to avoid protectionism.

Many WTO delegates have recently blamed the US for the slow pace of the Doha negotiations. Other issues - healthcare, Afghanistan, climate change - top Washington’s agenda, the delegates say, and trade has been shoved aside, with important consequences for the Doha talks. After nearly eight years, the Doha Round is already the longest running round of multilateral trade negotiations in history.

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk commented on the observed slowing of negotiations, and argued that domestic issues will not be a setback to a trade deal.

“The US has been able to get approval for a good, balanced, market opening trade agreement from our Congress every time we have sought,” he said in an interview with Livemint on a recent trip to New Delhi.

“[...] Rather than worrying about the domestic environment in the US, what we are inviting other countries to do is let’s come to the table, let’s sit down in Geneva in the multilateral fora, do the hard work necessary to bring a closure to negotiations not only in agriculture and non-agriculture sectors, but in goods, services and rules,” he said. Once Washington has gotten “the clarity we need,” he added, “we will be happy to go to the Congress and seek trade promotion authority.”

During her stop in Washington, Ashton also touched on transatlantic economic cooperation and her hope to work with US officials to lower regulatory barriers to trade. She called for regulatory convergence between the US and the EU, to make it easier to determine more efficient regulatory tools, and to set an example for the rest of the world.

“I am not arguing for ‘one size fits all’ solutions. But we need to look into each area on its merits and proceed on that basis. We need small successes to gradually build confidence in each others’ systems and regulatory approaches,” she noted.

The Trade Commissioner said that she hoped these measures would be made possible with the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), which met on Tuesday in its first session since US President Barack Obama took office in January. The two sides identified three matters on which they hope to streamline regulations: labelling, energy efficiency, and nanotechnology. .

ICTSD reporting; “U.S. serious about getting Doha round trade deal: EU,” REUTERS, 26 October 2009; “Ron Kirk | We’ve to commit, try a different approach,” LIVEMINT, 26 October 2009.