U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab on Monday said the World Trade Organization (WTO) will miss a key deadline set by Congress, making it virtually impossible to forge a new global agreement on agricultural free trade. Schwab took particular aim at European Union trade negotiators, saying they lacked “political courage” to match a “bold” U.S. proposal to cut tariffs and subsidies in their respective agricultural industries. At the heart of Schwab's disappointment was the passing of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) granted by Congress to Schwab for the purpose of negotiating a trade settlement without the supervision of lawmakers in the House and Senate. With the TPA expiring at the end of the year, Congress again assumed oversight over any trade negotiations, making the prospect of sweeping reforms highly unlikely. “At this stage of the game, we do not expect to be able to use the current TPA authority to enact a Doha Round agreement if and when one comes together,” she said. Senior lawmakers in Congress said the renewal of the TPA became an impossibility as special interest groups within U.S. agriculture became increasingly frightened by the prospect of losing federal subsidies. These special interests will almost certainly ensure the downfall of any future TPA, or the kind of significant industry reform needed to reach a WTO agreement. Schwab said the six major agricultural players at the recent WTO meeting in Geneva—Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States—failed to reach an agreement because on Australia and the United States were willing to open up their markets to foreign goods. “The United States cannot be in a position of negotiating with ourselves,” she said, calling the U.S. proposal “the most ambitious out there.” E.U. agricultural tariffs are twice as high as American ones, and its farm subsidies three times as high.
