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Australia, Brazil back return to
WTO talks
CANBERRA — Brazil and Australia have backed an urgent resumption of
stalled world trade talks before the US. presidential election and said
yesterday they hoped a breakthrough could still be reached. The so-called
Doha round of negotiations to slash trade barriers and farm subsidies
collapsed late last month after the United States and India failed to agree
on a proposal to help poor farmers deal with large-scale food imports.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab has since proposed a meeting of senior
trade officials in September to see if it is still possible to reach a
global deal to free up world trade. “I’m still hopeful that we can still
make an effort, but it has to be very fast,” Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso
Amorim told reporters in Canberra after talks with Australian counterpart
Stephen Smith.
A joint statement from Amorim and Australia’s Trade Minister Simon Crean
said both countries would work to revive the talks before the US
presidential election in November. “Based on past experience, there are two
possibilities. We either do it now, in September, or we will have to wait
for a long time,” Amorim said.
The Doha round of talks began in the Qatari capital almost seven years ago.
Brazil and Australia were among the seven key nations involved in the last
World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, and both are members of the
so-called Cairns group of agricultural exporting nations who want Europe and
the United States to lower farm subsidies.
Brazil has also taken WTO action against the United States over US subsidies
to cotton farmers, with Amorim yesterday saying his country would be seeking
“billions” in damages. “We are still in the process of making our precise
calculations to ask the (WTO) arbitration panel. But it is certainly very
high, because the harm the subsidies cause is very big. It is something
certainly in the area of billions,” he said.
— Reuters |