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Europe should hail US trade offer: Brown
10/14/2005
LONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters): Europe should welcome Washington's offer to abolish export subsidies and cut tariffs and break the current deadlock on world trade talks, British finance minister Gordon Brown said yesterday.
In an opinion piece published on the FT.com website just hours after trade ministers failed to make a breakthrough in troubled farm talks in Geneva, Brown noted the Hong Kong World Trade Organisation meeting was only eight weeks away.
"It is time for Europe and the US to negotiate away their differences," wrote Brown, who currently chairs the Ecofin group of EU finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund's main policy steering group.
The United States, whose offer of deep farm subsidy cuts this week gave new life to the four-year-old talks, has accused Brussels of not responding with a decisive move on tariffs.
Brown, who travels to China for the G20 meeting Thursday, has long argued that trade-distorting agricultural subsidies are hurting developing nations and has called on rich countries to set a 2010 deadline for ending them.
Trade ministers have agreed to meet again next week in Geneva to have another try as pressure builds to ensure that a blueprint for a successful conclusion of the WTO's Doha Round can be agreed by the December Hong Kong meeting.
But officials are also expecting trade to become an issue for G20 finance ministers when they meet just outside Beijing Saturday.
Brown said he would also publish today detailed proposals ahead of what he called a "make-or-break" summit on EU reform to equip the continent to face the challenges of rapid globalisation.
Meanwhile, the OECD cut its forecast for British growth this year but said yesterday that the economy was running near capacity and that there was no need for further Bank of England interest rate cuts.
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