Emerging economies spurn US move at advancing WTO talks

GENEVA (AFP) - The United States offered Tuesday to cut official aid to its farmers by 2.0 billon dollars a year in a bid to spur movement at WTO trade talks but found no support from key player Brazil.
“Nice try,” said a member of the Brazilian delegation to an offer from Washington to pare back its average annual farm subsidies to 15 billion dollars.
He said the proposed new level was “still too high.”
The exchange, highlighting an ominous gulf between developed and emerging market countries, came as ministers from 35 nations met in Geneva to break a seven-year deadlock in the Doha round of trade liberalisation negotiations. Emerging markets have voiced frustration at what they say have been inadequate offers on market-opening measures from rich participants such as the US and the European Union. On Tuesday, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said the world’s largest economy would cut its farm subsidies in exchange for an “ambitious market access outcome.”
She stressed that the offer was conditional on improved access to emerging markets for industrial products and a guarantee that US farm subsidies would not face any further legal action at the World Trade Organisation.
“These cuts will deliver effective and significant reductions in trade distorting domestic support,” she told journalists.
“These reductions are not offered in isolation and must be accompanied by significant market openings” in both agriculture and industrial products, she insisted.
The US move came after an abortive attempt by EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson to jolt the talks into movement on Monday with an announcement that the European Union was now ready to extend tariff cuts on agricultural products to 60 percent from 54 percent.
But even Mandelson’s fellow EU commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel said the offer was “nothing new” and Brazil dismissed it as “propaganda.”
The EU, as is the United States, is linking concessions in farm trade to steps by emerging countries to take in more manufactured goods.