Zoellick lays out his agenda for World Economic Forum
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick will participate in discussions with other government trade ministers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 28-30, with the intent to get the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Agenda back on track.
“We must continue to clear away the remaining underbrush and focus on reaching ambitious and achievable benchmarks among the three core areas of agriculture, goods and services,” Zoellick said Thursday.
The Doha Development Agenda was first announced in November 2001. Within the Doha negotiations, the United States was the first WTO member to put forward a comprehensive agricultural trade reform proposal, which called for the end of export subsidies, cuts of $1 billion in annual domestic subsidies, and lowering the average allowed global tariffs from 62 percent to 15 percent. The United States also proposed that WTO members agree to this negotiation to a specific date for elimination of agricultural tariffs and trade-distorting domestic support.
The United States also proposed eliminating all tariffs on consumer and industrial goods by 2015. A University of Michigan study estimates that global free trade in goods and services would raise U.S. annual income by $500 billion. The same study concluded gains of up to $690 billion for the European Union.
Zoellick will participate today in a meeting with the International Business Council and hold bilateral meetings with senior trade officials from Australia, Israel, India and Germany.
Zoellick will participate in a World Economic Forum panel “Keeping the Global Economy Running” Saturday morning. He will hold bilateral meetings with top trade officials from Indonesia and Malaysia later that morning and in the afternoon he will join an informal session of trade ministers involved with the Doha Development Agenda.
On Sunday, Zoellick will meet with Brazil’s foreign trade minister and on Monday, he will meet in Zurich, Switzerland, with the Russian trade minister to review Russia’s WTO accession efforts.