Bush praises EU’s offer to end agriculture export subsidies
The Bush administration welcomed the European Union’s expressed wish to end export subsidies for global trade in agricultural products.
“The goal of eliminating export subsidies has been important to the U.S. and others for a long time,” said U.S. trade representative Robert B. Zoellick in a statement. “The United States already offered to eliminate U.S. export subsidies.”
“This bold initiative proves that our commitment to the Doha Round is more than words. Agriculture is key to its success, so we are ready to show flexibility,” said Franz Fischler, EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries, in a statement Monday.
“Provided we get a balanced deal on market access, domestic support and non-trade concerns and strict parallelism on export competition, we are ready to put all the export subsidies on the table,' he added.
'This means that our American, Australian or Canadian partners have to make clear that they will fully match the EU on the forms of export support they use, such as export credits, abuse of food aid or state trading enterprises,” the EU official said.
Zoellick said the United States will support the EC’s move by “agreeing to negotiate a parallel elimination of the subsidy element within export credits, and to negotiate disciplines on food aid to preclude displacement of commercial sales.”
Zoellick and the trade ministers of 29 other industrialized countries will work to advance the World Trade Organization’s Doha development agenda at a meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday.