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To: long-gone who wrote (47599)	1/30/2000 1:54:00 PM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116753

Trade Talks: Sunday January 30 10:50 AM ET U.S. Pulls Out Stops for Its Trade Agenda By Knut Engelmann DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States warned Sunday that any delay in launching a new round of global trade talks could give rise to dangerous protectionism. A day after President Clinton addressed the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, his top trade negotiator Charlene Barshefsky made a fresh plea to developing nations to rethink their opposition to labor and environmental standards. ''The trade agenda must move forward,'' Barshefsky told a news briefing. ''If the institutional process falters, you leave a vacuum in which protectionist pressures can rise -- that would be exceptionally dangerous.'' Having failed to launch a new round of market opening talks at a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last month, the U.S. pulled out all the stops here to convince the rest of the world that it was in everybody's interest to move forward fast. ''Globally, our agenda today must be to make the case for imports in all our countries,'' U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said. ''And it must be to recognize that in an integrated world, trade cannot be divorced from other concerns.'' U.S. calls for more stringent labor and environmental rules have angered developing countries who fear their exports will become more costly and put them at a competitive disadvantage. The Clinton administration has said developing nations should seek to avoid the mistakes today's developed countries made on their own paths to industrialization. ''It's very difficult to argue that labor standards have nothing to do with trade,'' Barshefsky said. She added that developing countries could no longer afford to brush off concerns about such sensitive issues in the U.S. and Europe, which together provided the market for some 40 percent of all the goods produced in the world. But despite the rhetoric, U.S. officials acknowledged that the two sides remained far apart on some key issues, raising doubts whether a new round could be launched this year. ''The developing world is not hearing what we're saying and we're not hearing what the developing world is saying,'' Barshefsky said. ''We're passing like ships in the night.'' Barshefsky said to help build consensus among WTO members, work should continue on some basic aspects of the current round, such as better implementation of existing trade agreements. At the same time, more work was needed to make the WTO more transparent and its institutions more efficient. Particularly on the issues of transparency and reform, industrial nations have yet to agree on what exactly should be done and exactly how far they should go. ''The fact is that many WTO members do not want these changes,'' Barshefsky said. But she added: ''If the United States and Europe don't get together, it doesn't matter what other countries do -- there will not be a new trade round.'' Summers said the U.S. would press on with its own agenda for a more globalize economy -- including support for more open markets, free capital flows, structural reforms in developing nations, and support for the world's poorest. Continued strong growth in the U.S. economy also was a crucial element in making the world a more prosperous place for everybody, he said. ''Perhaps the greatest contribution we can make to a global economy that realizes the potential that these developments hold out is to keep our own economy strong,'' he said.