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The following story is from the March 5 issue of International
Trade Reporter
Current Reports:
Trade Policy
U.S. Says No WTO Deal Possible
Until Other Countries Improve Their Offers
The United States warned March 2 that no further progress is likely in the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations until other countries agree to improve their market-opening offers to ensure new opportunities for U.S. workers, farmers, and businesses.
“A strong, market-opening agreement for both goods and services … would be an important contribution to addressing the global economic crisis,” according to a new report released by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. “The administration is committed to working with our trading partners for such an outcome. However, it will be necessary to correct the imbalance in the current negotiations in which the value of what the United States would be expected to give is well-known and easily calculable, whereas the broad flexibilities available to others leaves unclear the value of new opportunities for our workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses.”
Panama FTA to Be Submitted First
The report—“2009 Trade Policy Agenda and 2008 Annual Report,”written by the USTR staff with input from other agencies—also said that the Obama administration hopes to submit to Congress “relatively quickly” the pending U.S. free trade agreement with Panama.
It said it plans to establish “benchmarks”
for progress on the other two pending FTAs with Colombia and South Korea. But it did not mention a possible timetable for sending the agreements to Congress.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said March 3 that the Obama administration wants to work with Congress to move forward on the FTAs with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea
(see related report, this issue).
Obama has said that he opposes submitting the Colombia and Korea FTAs to Congress at the present time, arguing that Colombia needs to do more to curtail violence against union members and that the Korea agreement as negotiated by the Bush administration falls short in opening the Korean market to U.S. automobile and auto-parts producers.
The USTR report, which is compiled annually, also said that the administration plans to work with Canada and Mexico to identify ways in which the North American Free Trade Agreement could be improved without having an adverse effect on trade. “We will do this in a collaborative spirit and emphasize ways in which this process can benefit the citizens of all three countries,”
the report said.
As a presidential candidate last year, Obama vowed to sit down with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to discuss incorporating labor and environmental provisions in the text of NAFTA instead of retaining them in separate side agreements, which is currently the case.
President Obama said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Feb. 17 that his argument with respect to NAFTA has consistently been that “we might as well incorporate
[the labor and environmental provisions] into the full agreement so that they're fully enforceable” (26 ITR 256, 2/19/09).
Consultations on TPA
The USTR report also said that the Obama administration will only ask Congress to renew its so-called trade promotion authority—under which trade agreements negotiated by the executive branch cannot be amended—after engaging in extensive consultations with Congress “to establish the proper constraints on that authority and after we have assessed our priorities and made clear to this body and the American people what we intend to do with it.”
Reflecting a campaign promise made by Obama last year, the report also said that his administration plans to review the implementation of all FTAs and bilateral investment treaties (BITs)
to ensure that they advance the public interest.
“We particularly recognize the need to pay special attention to how our policies influence the well-being of people struggling both at home and in the poorest regions of the world,” the report said. “Fundamentally, our trade policy needs a keen appreciation of its economic consequences for our workers, their families, and their communities.…”
It said, however, that eliminating barriers to trade in light of the current serious turmoil in the U.S. economy and financial markets “will be a challenge.”
By Gary G. Yerkey
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