Focus on bilateral trade deals, Bush is urged
Financial Times, UK
Focus on bilateral trade deals, Bush is urged
By Christopher Swann and Edward Alden in Washington
3 April 2006
Bill Thomas, President George W. Bush’s most important congressional ally on trade liberalisation, is urging the administration to focus its energy on concluding bilateral trade deals, warning on Monday that the Doha multilateral round of talks was heading for failure because of conflicts between the US and the European Union.
“The US and the EU have irreconcilable differences on trade, and when you have irreconcilable differences the best thing you can do is call it off,” said Mr Thomas, Republican chairman of the influential House ways and means committee, who will retire from Congress this year.
He also warned about the growing influence of protectionism in the US, saying the “anti-free trade forces” were poised to capture control of Congress in this year’s election.
The pessimistic conclusions from Mr Thomas, who has repeatedly come to the rescue of the Bush administration in pushing controversial trade deals through Congress, will not be reassuring to the administration’s efforts to conclude the Doha round negotiations.
The talks have been stalled for months, largely over US-EU differences over eliminating trade protection for European farmers.
“For anyone hoping for a significant conclusion to the Doha round, my apologies,” he said on Monday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “Whatever the last whiney note is at the Doha round, we should soldier on, but it should not be where the US puts the majority of its resources.
“I don’t know the exact day the music stopped, but it stopped and we need to get off the merry-go-round,” he added.
“The US believes a successful Doha Round will produce tremendous benefits for global economic growth and poverty reduction,” said Christin Baker of the US Trade Representative’s Office. “That is why the US will keep pushing for a strong result, but we are clearly disappointed with the lack of urgency and political will shown by some of our trading partners.”
Mr Thomas was instrumental in the administration’s one-vote House victory in 2001 for fast-track trade promotion authority (TPA), which enables it to put trade deals for an up-or-down vote without amendments in the Congress. That authority is due to expire in July 2007, and the administration is pressing to conclude the Doha round and a range of new bilateral trade deals before that deadline.
This creates a tight timetable for trade negotiators, since any new trade deals would need to be sealed comfortably ahead of the expiration of TPA.
Mr Thomas argued that the administration should therefore focus its remaining attention on bilateral deals - which he said could build into broader agreements. He said that the agreements the US had struck with smaller countries in the Middle East such as Oman and Bahrain, and the negotiations under way with the United Arab Emirates, had helped to bring Saudi Arabia reluctantly to the negotiating table and led to its accession to the World Trade Organisation.
He was also enthusiastic about the coming US negotiations with South Korea, the world’s 10th largest economy, saying the talks could bring about a fundamental restructuring between two developed economies.
But he warned the current negotiations with Thailand, which have been stalled in part because of political turmoil in Bangkok, were running out of time to reach a successful conclusion. He suggested that the only progress had been in “the waistlines” of the diplomats negotiating over official meals.
Mr Thomas, who also played a central role last year in pushing the controversial Central American Free Trade Agreement through Congress, was set to lose his chairmanship at the end of this year under term limits set in 1995.
