| Women, minorities most affected, and we're blamed of course. |
July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Negotiations among six key governments over a new global trade agreement collapsed, with the European Union, Brazil, India and Japan blaming U.S. unwillingness to cut farm subsidies.The impasse led Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization, to suspend the five-year-old talks aimed at dismantling market barriers and stimulating global economic growth. The WTO had aimed to seal an accord this year. ``The U.S. was unwilling to accept or even acknowledge the flexibility of others shown in the room,'' EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told a news conference in Geneva after two days of talks. ``This action has led to the round being suspended.''
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| Pretty soon we'll be looking for a deal the size of Zimbabwe's economy; failing that one the size of North Korea. |
The U.S. didn't sweeten its offer to scale back spending on its farmers because trade partners were more concerned with protecting sensitive commodities such as beef with exemptions from tariff cuts, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said. She
Lamy has demanded more flexibility from larger governments, calling concessions by the EU, the U.S., India and Brazil vital to the talks. He says the U.S. must impose tougher limits on aid to farmers, the EU has to cut its protective tariffs on commodity imports and India and Brazil should slash customs duties on industrial goods.
The administration of George W. Bush believes it is ``entitled to compensation dollar for dollar, for the farm subsidies they lose, from developing countries in the form of new market access,'' Mandelson said. The U.S. was the sole government among the six not to improve its offer, Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said. ``It's very clear that the EU made a movement, and everybody put something on the table except for one country, who said we can't see anything on the table,'' he told reporters.
The EU has offered to trim its farm tariffs by an average of 50 percent, near the 51 percent cut demanded by a group of developing countries led by Brazil and India. The 25-nation bloc also says it wants to shield 8 percent of tariff lines from the highest duty cuts. For its part, the U.S. says the highest tariffs on farm goods should fall by 70 percent and only 1 percent of products be protected from duty cuts. Still, the U.S. has declined to lower the more than $22 billion limit in annual payments that it set last year in the talks. The U.S. now spends as much as $19 billion a year on farm support.