WTO talks won't stop Asian free trade drive
WTO talks won't stop Asian free trade drive
Alan Wheatley, Reuters, Tokyo
Fast-track trade negotiating authority for U.S. President George
W. Bush will give a much-needed boost to the Doha round of global
market-opening talks, but is unlikely to slow a separate drive
for closer trade ties across Asia, officials said on Monday.
Bush looks set to win the authority to negotiate new trade
agreements without the risk of amendments by Congress --
restoring a power that lapsed in 1994 -- after the House of
Representatives approved a "trade promotion authority" bill late
on Friday following an 18-month campaign by the White House.
The Senate, which backed similar legislation earlier this
year, is expected to pass the bill this week and send it to Bush
to sign into law.
Coupled with U.S. proposals published last week to tear down
global barriers to farm trade, fast-track authority is a fillip
for the market-opening talks that ministers from the 144-member
World Trade Organization launched last November in Doha in the
hope of forging agreement by the end of 2004.
"It's good news. Our assessment is that it enables the U.S. to
adopt more of a leadership role in the WTO and, specifically,
APEC," said George Troup, a senior New Zealand trade official
with responsibility for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) forum.
"The U.S. does have much greater authority and clout when
people know it's in a position to deal," Troup added.
With the Doha round no longer looking like a lost cause,
regional officials said plans were likely to be revived for a
"mini-ministerial" meeting in Asia in November to take stock of
progress.
Most Asia-Pacific countries, which rely heavily on trade, were
so frustrated by the delays in following up the 1986-93 Uruguay
Round of market-opening measures that they threw themselves into
exploring bilateral agreements with like-minded free traders.
"Some of the bilateral agreements going round were embarked on
because the U.S. wasn't in a position to play," Troup said. "And
the devil makes work for idle trade negotiators."
Singapore has been in the vanguard. It has signed free trade
agreements (FTAs) with Japan and New Zealand and is negotiating
with Australia and the United States.
Japan is talking to Mexico and to South Korea, which in turn
is eying a deal with Chile.
More ambitiously, China has begun exploratory FTA talks with
the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN),
prompting Japan to declare a similar long-term goal.
Some trade academics fear that the rash of bilateral and
regional FTAs will be stumbling blocks, not building blocks, to
more-open multilateral trade by diverting trade away from
countries that are left out.
Nevertheless, officials said a new lease of life for the Doha
round was unlikely to reverse this trend.
Nobuo Tanaka, a senior official in Japan's Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Economy, said the pursuit of bilateral and
regional market-opening agreements was part of what he called a
multi-layered approach to trade liberalization.
"This kind of Asian regional integration will be a driving
force for a new WTO round," said Tanaka, who is director-general
of the multilateral trade system department in METI's Trade
Policy Bureau.
A regional policy adviser said China and Japan were determined
to keep pressing for FTAs with ASEAN as part of their competition
for leadership in the region.
"I think Japan and China have got their own strategic
political games they're playing through trade," said the
official, who declined to be identified. "There are non-economic
benefits that they want to get out of these agreements quite
apart from trade liberalization."
At the same time, other Asian governments saw the need for
closer regional integration because of a fear of being excluded
from two huge blocs in the making -- an expanded European Union
and Bush's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.
"Those big trends are already in place and could well be
enough to lead eventually to an East Asian free trade area," the
policy planner said.