08/02/06 WTO Deal Unlikely

WTO Deal Unlikely. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It's now been a week since World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy called for a suspension of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations. And although U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has said it's highly unlikely a global deal will be reached before expiration of Presidential Trade Promotion Authority - she's made it clear the U.S. hasn't given up. That's why Schwab spent most of last week (week of July 24th) in Brazil - meeting with Foreign Minister Celso Amorim - in what is expected to be a series of trips to sustain support for the global trade and development goals of the Doha Development Agenda. Despite the efforts of Schwab - Deputy Assistant Trade Representative Jason Hafemeister says a meeting of all WTO member-nations at the ministerial level isn't likely anytime soon. HAFEMEISTER: It was a pretty bitter meeting in Geneva and it's going to take some time for people to go home and re-access and frankly from our perspective they've got to improve their offers if we are going to get there. So I think we'll make the effort but it probably won't happen real soon that we get people back to the table. And therefore - Hafemeister says countries questioning domestic farm subsidies may turn to litigation. HAFEMEISTER: We certainly have gotten some informal signals from other countries that if they couldn't achieve their objective through negotiation; their objective of reforming subsidy programs, they would look at their options under litigation. We are going to see that others will be tempted to follow that route. Our line will remain the same. It's better to negotiate than to litigate and we don't want to see the WTO turned into a forum where everyone is suing each other all the time. But regardless of that threat - Hafemeister says it just didn't make sense for U.S. negotiators to give into the pressures of the European Union and other developing nations to make further concessions without getting anything in return. HAFEMEISTER: The offers on the table from other countries just didn't add up. There was not enough new market opening for us to feel like we could conclude a deal that would have been faithful to the promises that we all made when we started these negotiations back in Doha in 2001. We are prepared to make substantial reforms in our domestic support programs and we made that very clear in the talks. The problem is that we didn't see enough yet in the market access from other countries. Following the breakdown of the Doha Round - lawmakers and farm group leaders expressed their appreciation to U.S. negotiators for holding their ground in support of America's producers. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.