Washington got a blunt message from the rest of the world's wealthy nations over steel tariffs and farming subsidies on Thursday -- do not resort to protectionism.
Trade and finance ministers of the other 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development took the US to task during a two-day meeting at OECD headquarters in Paris.
"Grave concerns were expressed about a return to protectionism in the last few months," Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian prime minister and chairman of the OECD talks, said.
He blamed the tariffs on foreign steel imports into the US and recently announced plans for billions of dollars in subsidies to US crop and dairy farmers.
"The messages during the talks were very clear and those who needed to hear certainly heard," he said.
A communique issued in the OECD's name -- despite US objections, according to diplomats -- said all OECD members were committed to pledges made in Doha, Qatar, last year to pursue free trade and take account of developing countries.
"We welcome the launch of the Doha Development Agenda and reaffirm our pledge to reject the use of protectionism," it said.
The diplomats said US envoys objected to a communique which would daub them as "protectionist" even if it did not mention the US by name.
Deputy US Trade Representative Peter Allgeier told a news conference after the OECD meeting that Washington was still committed to free trade.
"The United States reiterated our very strong unequivocal commitment to negotiate across the full range of topics in the Doha agenda, to meet the overall deadline of completing the negotiations by January of 2005 and to meet the intermediate deadlines such as we face in the coming months," he said.
Others showed little confidence. The 18-nation Cairns Group of farming nations from Australia and Canada to Paraguay and the Philippines -- some of them not OECD members -- issued a statement in Paris of its own attacking Washington's farm aid.
"At US$180 billion over the next decade, the sheer size of this package will hurt farmers round the world," it said. "The impact will be particularly damaging on developing countries, net food exporters and importers alike."
The tension was palpable during the talks, with another member of the US delegation, Andrew Natsios of the US Agency for International Development, accusing the other leading trade bloc, the EU, of hypocrisy.
"I would just urge the Europeans to stop their protectionist stand and look at their own policies, which are the problem," told reporters.
"I think there's a little hypocrisy in arguing that our subsidies are a problem. If the Europeans would reform their subsidies we'd certainly be willing to discuss the subject.
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy avoided aggressive rhetoric and said the EU would pursue efforts to ease tensions.
He said he believed US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Allgeier, the deputy sent to Paris, were in favour of trade reform, hinting that they were under extreme pressure back in the US.
"What remains to be seen is whether they can speak in the name of the United States," Lamy, who negotiates trade deals at international level on behalf of the 15-nation EU, told reporters.
The spats on steel and farm aid have overshadowed efforts to get a new round of global trade liberalisation on track since a major meeting in Doha, and pitted the world's two largest trading powers against each other.
Michael Moore, head of the Geneva-based WTO, the body that polices international trade rules, told reporters:
"There's only one thing worse than when the big guys get together, it's when they don't get together."
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