PARIS — The top U.S. trade official said Thursday it’s too soon to declare the Doha Round of commerce-liberalization talks a failure, even as it nears its 10th anniversary and diplomats say a deal this year is impossible.
But while Doha stalls, Washington is prepared to use bilateral and regional agreements to achieve its aim of boosting U.S. exports and rebalancing the trade deficit, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said.
“It’s way too soon to begin any talk about giving up or walking away from Doha,” Kirk said from the sidelines of an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development meeting in Paris.
His predecessor in the job, Susan Schwab, said recently that the Doha Round was broken and couldn’t be fixed.
“You won’t find many voices saying, ‘It’s over; it’s dead; throw in the towel,’ ” Kirk insisted. “There’s still a great belief that this is worth the effort, even though it’s taken time.”
But he expressed disappointment that a hoped-for breakthrough earlier this year hadn’t emerged and stressed that any successful deal would require sacrifices also from rapidly emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The refusal of these new economic powers — known collectively as the BRICS countries — to cede to U.S. demands for greater market access has been one of the main stumbling blocks in negotiations.
Officials in Germany, one of the world’s biggest exporters, are clinging to hopes of reviving the Doha talks.
“Free world trade is the best engine for markets and the best engine for growth that we can imagine,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech to parliament Thursday before leaving for the G8 summit.
