NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Brazil’s trade ambassador to the World Trade Organisation said yesterday that the United States had completed a review of its trade policies and was ready to re-engage in stalled global trade talks.
The Obama administration, which appointed in March new US trade representative Ron Kirk, has been conducting a review of US trade policy including efforts to reach a deal on the Doha round of world trade talks that collapsed last year.
“He (Kirk) essentially said ‘yes we have finished the review, we don’t think that what we have on the table is enough to take us to the end of the race but we are ready to re-engage on the terms you have explained’,” Ambassador Roberto Azevedo said in an interview on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the Cairns Group of 19 leading agricultural exporting nations in Bali.
A US spokeswoman for Kirk could not immediately confirm whether the review was complete.
Azevedo said he interpreted that Kirk meant that Washington was ready to make concessions on its agricultural subsidies, which have proved a major sticking point in the Doha trade talks.
“They have to give concessions on subsidies if they want to re-engage,” said Azevedo. “That’s one of the conditions.”
Trade ministers came close in July 2008 to a deal on the Doha round of talks, launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001 to help poor countries prosper through trade.
