US trade stature tarnished ( 2003-09-03 09:18) (China Daily)
US President George W. Bush's tarnished reputation as a free trader will be
under close scrutiny at a key World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Mexico
next week, amid doubts he will make the concessions needed for a global trade
deal.
Bush has built up a mixed trade record since taking office nearly three years
ago.
While touting free trade as the road to growth for rich and poor countries
alike, he has also caved in to protectionist forces by slapping huge tariffs on
imported steel and signing a six-year farm bill that boosted crop and dairy
subsidies by 67 per cent or about US$6.4 billion annually.
"I think the president is instinctively a free trader with a very strong
streak of doing what is politically advantageous," said Sherman Katz, a trade
policy scholar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
WTO member trade ministers open a crucial meeting in the Mexican resort of
Cancun on September 10, hoping to make enough progress to keep world trade talks
chugging towards a global deal by January 2005.
But moves like the US steel tariffs and the farm bill have raised questions
in many developing countries about how much substance lies behind Bush's free
trade rhetoric.
"We talk a good game about trade, but then we subsidize our domestic
constituencies and fail to open our markets," said John Audley, director of the
trade equity and development project at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
The United States has also been slow to comply with a number of adverse WTO
panel rulings issued during Bush's presidency, including a high-profile spat
with the European Union where the United States faces US$4 billion in possible
trade retaliation for illegally subsidizing exports.
Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a business
group representing major US exporters, said Congress shared some of the blame
for not complying with WTO rulings.
But he said Bush has contributed to an anti-WTO mood in Congress by not
bringing more cases against dubious foreign trade policies, and that many
politicians now view the WTO as biased against the United States.
Agriculture is at the heart of world trade talks, with both rich and poor
countries eager for more market access around the world but at odds over how to
accomplish that.
US farmers, who are expected to receive about US$19 billion in government
subsidies this year, are refusing to give up those payments unless poor
countries agree to open their markets by lowering agricultural tariffs.
