Both rich and poor countries need to improve their offers to cut farm subsidies and tariffs to get world trade talks back on track after their collapse in July, the top U.S. trade official said on Thursday, according to Reuters. For its part, the United States must make deeper cuts in trade-distorting farm subsidies, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab wrote in the Wall Street Journal. But "we will not succeed if the bulk of WTO members expect one member -- the U.S. -- to make yet another unilateral move, without any reasonable expectation that others will move in tandem with comparable ambition," Schwab said. "There is a formula for balanced moves by the major trading countries, both developed and developing, that could put us on the path to achieving a successful Doha outcome," Schwab said in an op-ed piece published just one day after U.S. elections gave Democrats control of the House of Representative and possibly also the Senate. Pre-election speculation that a Democratic victory would reduce the Bush administration's flexibility in the talks never made sense, Schwab said. "There is a long tradition in the U.S. of presidents reaching across the aisle to work with Congress on trade issues," Schwab said. The United States is ready to strike a deal, but current proposals for cutting farm subsidies and tariffs that the European Union, the G20 group of developing countries and other negotiating blocs have put on the table "are either too vague or too full of exemptions," she said. "We need to be clear what constitutes 'success' (in the negotiations). Scooping up what is on the table right now and calling it a day will not work," Schwab said. Schwab said breaking the current impasse will require: --The EU, Japan and other G10 countries to make deeper farm tariff cuts, with significant new market access for those "sensitive products" exempted from full tariff cuts. --Major developing countries to make deeper farm tariff cuts that includes meaningful market openings for their sheltered "special products." --The United States and the EU to make deeper reductions in trade-distorting farm support. --Both developed and major developing countries to cut industrial tariffs on a significant number of goods. A breakthrough in those four areas would help reinvigorate negotiations on services trade and enable WTO members to "finalize the many other elements that have to fall into place for a final package," Schwab said.
