U.S. Perspective on the WTO Ministerial Meeting - Alan Larson, Under Secretary of Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs - Transcript

Statement by Acting Under Secretary for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, Washington, DC, November 22, 1999.

It'll be just over a week from now that the Seattle World Trade Ministerial will begin. This afternoon I'd like to highlight briefly the perspective of the United States Government on this very important meeting.

I think the starting point is that world trade has been a real driver of growth and prosperity ever since the end of World War II. This has been facilitated by a series of trade negotiations that have opened markets around the world. Certainly, we in the United States realize we've benefited greatly from this market-opening exercise, but we also know that hundreds of millions of people all around the world have been lifted out of poverty and have joined the middle class in part because of the success in opening up international trade.

At the Seattle WTO meeting, we intend to launch a new round of trade negotiations that can extend and expand this process we've all enjoyed since the end of World War II. In particular, the United States hopes to pursue a three-part agenda in Seattle.

The first is to make progress in identifying a market-opening agenda for agriculture, for services, and for manufactured goods.

Second, we want to make sure that the WTO itself is transformed in a way that makes it more transparent and accountable and in a way that makes sure that the benefits of trade liberalization are broadly shared around the world and within countries.

And, third, we hope that we can launch at Seattle some very specific initiatives that would take place there to mark the start of the round.

To elaborate briefly on these, with respect to the first broad area, identifying a market-opening agenda, in agriculture, we believe that thorough reform is at the heart of our own goals. We're seeking to eliminate export subsidies, to substantially reduce trade-distorting domestic supports, and to expand access through tariff cuts and better administration of tariff rate quotas.

In the services area, we would like to open a broad range of sectors to competition, including distribution, finance, telecommunications, audiovisual and environmental services, as well as the professions and construction. Besides these market-access commitments, we hope that we will be able to clarify existing commitments and pursue, to the extent needed, suitable guidelines for heavily regulated sectors, as we did in the case of the basic agreement on telecommunications.

In the area of industrial goods and products, Seattle should set the stage for negotiations aimed at reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers, for developing new sectoral agreements and for increasing participation of countries in the existing agreements. This would include such things as zero-for-zero tariff cuts and tariff harmonization.

We do think that there are other topics that will need to be addressed as well, including trade facilitation, which is very important and very closely related to market access.

In terms of the second broad area that I mentioned, changing the institutional nature of the WTO itself, we believe that it's very important that the WTO be reformed to make sure that it is fully responsive to the new challenges that the world faces and that it works in a way that creates prosperity for all of our citizens. We have submitted, for example, a proposal for improving transparency in the WTO.

We also want to make sure that the developing countries are equipped to take full advantage of the opportunities that trade liberalization creates. And that means, in part, enhanced technical assistance to help them meet their obligations but also seize the opportunities. The United States has a number of bilateral programs in this regard, and we have been working with a number of countries, including Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia, and Bangladesh, to submit a joint proposal to the WTO on technical assistance and capacity building.

Now, there are two other issues that are very important to the United States in this area of reforming the WTO. One is making sure that the WTO is responsive to the interests of working people around the world. We have called for a working group on trade and labor. We believe that such a working group could build on the principles set forth at the Singapore ministerial. We believe that the credibility of the WTO needs to be strengthened by demonstrating a commitment to examine trade-related labor issues.

The second topic that we think needs to be addressed is the relationship of trade and the environment. Here, one of our objectives is to find win-win strategies--strategies that can advance trade objectives at the same time as they advance environmental objectives. For our own part, we have agreed--the President has decided, in fact--that we will do a written review of the likely environmental consequences of the round. This the President announced in an executive order on November 16th.

Now, the third broad area that I mentioned is the set of initiatives that could be launched at Seattle itself. Here we would like to see an agreement on transparency in government procurement, which would create new opportunities for companies that are bidding on government contracts and would facilitate good governance by ensuring that there is a basic standard of openness and transparency in the way that governments go about procuring goods and services.

A second key goal for us at Seattle is to get agreement on the extension of a moratorium on duties on electronic commerce. A third deliverable at Seattle could be ratification of the results of an ongoing review of the dispute settlement understanding, the so-called DSU.

And finally, we hope that countries will agree at Seattle to the adoption of what's called ITA-2--the new Information Technology Agreement, Part Two. This is really an agreement to eliminate duties on those goods that are so important to information technology. This is a quick overview of some of the objectives that my government has.

I would end by just saying that we recognize that, as the host of this meeting, we have some responsibilities to work with other countries to find an agenda that can command the support of all. And we are going to be working very hard with all of the delegates at Seattle to get a successful launch of the new round. As I said at the beginning, I think this is very important in order to extend and expand this record of prosperity that we have enjoyed over the last 50 years.

COPYRIGHT 1999 U.S. Government Printing Office
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