Hon Phil Goff
Minister of Trade

22 June 2007
Media statement

Doha break-down a setback for WTO

Trade Minister Phil Goff said the break-down of trade talks overnight in Potsdam was a serious setback for the WTO Doha negotiations.

“We needed to see progress made by Brazil, EU, India and the United States on the issues between them that have been blocking movement towards concluding the round”, Mr Goff said.

“However the G4 members have not moved far enough in their respective offers to allow a compromise to be reached and that makes it hard to pull together a deal in the foreseeable future.

Mr Goff said the reasons for the breakdown, following some promising signals in recent weeks, were not yet entirely clear.

“It appears that Brazil and India have not been prepared to offer sufficient movement in cutting tariffs on non-agricultural goods and equally that Europe needed to move further on cutting agricultural tariffs and the US to reduce further its level of domestic subsidies for agriculture.

“I understand Celso Amorim, Peter Mandelson and Susan Schwab are on their way to Geneva. They will be talking to Pascal Lamy, the negotiating group chairs and WTO delegations there on Friday and the prospects for the Geneva process will be clearer after that.

“But there will be major difficulty in making progress this year in the absence of convergence among the G4.

"New Zealand remains committed to doing everything we can to help keep the negotiations alive.

“The multilateral process remains in place. Pascal Lamy will now be focused on what can be achieved in the Geneva process.

"If it does not prove possible to make progress in the short term we will need to consider how to prevent potential damage to the WTO and the rules based system of international trade that we and others rely on", Mr Goff said.

ENDS

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