BEIJING - Talks this month to create a Pan-American free trade area will likely founder on the same issue of U.S. agricultural protectionism that scuttled September's World Trade Organization talks in Cancún, Brazil's agriculture minister said Wednesday.
The outlook for the success of Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks isn't hopeful if North American trade negotiators, and particularly those of the U.S., continue to refuse to lower agricultural trade barriers, Roberto Rodrigues told reporters.
Rodrigues said he was discouraged by the lack of results at last month's Trinidad & Tobago preparatory meetings for the FTAA summit in Miami that that will begin Nov. 17.
''North American negotiators were against any discussion in FTAA about agricultural protectionism, especially in domestic support measures,'' he said during a visit to China.
''We are ambitious in the FTAA, (but) that depends very much on the attitude of the United States in negotiations,'' Dow Jones Newswires quoted him as saying.
Brazil's concerns about U.S. agricultural protectionism focus on issues of domestic support, export subsidies and market access.
Rodrigues' comments emphasize the gulf between industrialized states and developing countries on trade access that effectively derailed the WTO meeting in Cancún, Mexico, in September.
Consensus at the meeting fell apart when Brazil and India led a group of nearly two dozen developing countries in demanding rich nations put agricultural sector protections, including subsidies, on the table.
The failure has put the success of the Doha round of WTO talks in doubt as the so-called ''Group of 22'' developing countries refuse to discuss the trade priorities of industrialized countries, such as investment rules and intellectual property rights, unless there are parallel negotiations on agricultural trade issues.
Upcoming talks between the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim aimed at breaking the trade negotiation deadlock aren't likely to succeed, Rodrigues said.
''This meeting has been asked for by Zoellick, so maybe the Americans could indicate now some possibilities of advancement (of negotiations), but for the moment until today, I don't have too many hopes,'' he said.
Rodrigues said that Brazil remains keenly interested in successfully negotiating an FTAA agreement, but has higher hopes for trade deals with its neighbors in the Mercosur trade grouping and with the European Union.
Mercosur, or South American Common Market, groups Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Chile and Bolivia as associated members. The customs union aims to eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers within the bloc, while levying a common duty on outside imports.
''Trade is fundamental for (underdeveloped) countries to get more jobs and income and to go out of stagnation and underdevelopment,'' Rodrigues said.
``(Therefore) rich, developed countries (should) open their agricultural markets to developing countries because rich countries can pay not to produce, while we have to produce to pay our debts.''
Rodrigues will meet with officials from China's Ministry of Agriculture and quarantine authority Thursday to try to open China's markets to Brazilian beef exports.
China lifted a three-year ban on imports of beef and poultry in late 2002 but unspecified sanitary concerns of Chinese authorities have impeded a resumption of large-scale Brazilian beef exports.
Rodrigues said that he expected Brazil's exports of grains and soybeans to China to exceed 7 million metric tons in 2004.
Those exports will be fueled by projected total Brazilian soybean production of 58 million tons next year, an increase from 52 million tons in 2003, Rodrigues said.
Brazil is China's second-largest soybean supplier behind the United States and recorded a 38 percent year-on-year rise in its soybean exports to China to 5.2 million tons in the January to August period.
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