Business leaders urge EU to save WTO talks

ET Business leaders joined Saturday in urging the European Union and other governments to push ahead with trade reforms and salvage World Trade Organization talks that appeared on the verge of failure.

"As world business leaders, we are very concerned with the lack of progress in Hong Kong," said a statement released by World Business Leaders for Growth, one of many business coalitions lobbying for progress, especially on lowering tariffs and other limits on foreign manufactured goods and services.

Business and farm leaders in the United States and a number of other countries expressed frustration over the apparent lack of progress toward setting a global trade deal that would conclude WTO negotiations launched in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.

Delegates to the 149-member WTO were under pressure to finalize a weakened compromise deal by Sunday, or face seeing the effort fail. Negotiators reported virtually no progress in any area, with agricultural trade proving the major obstacle.
"The world demands movement from its leadership," said Harold McGraw III, chairman of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Failure "runs the risk of degrading the whole world trading system," he said. "The penalties of failure, the economic consequences are very real. The political consequences are very real."
The executives accused officials of holding back for the sake of domestic political reasons.
"There's a lot of spin going on here to try to protect peoples' political reputations when they go home," said John H.W. Denton, chief executive officer of the Australian law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

"If the trade ministers fail, this matter must be raised to the heads of government," he said.
High-powered business delegations from America, Europe, Canada, Japan and many other countries were in Hong Kong lobbying trade negotiators alongside other nongovernment groups seeking to influence the outcome of the talks.
"The voice of business has got to be loud," McGraw said.

The executives were so busy lobbying trade delegates that earlier in the week WTO director general Pascal Lamy appealed to them to "try to allow the ministers enough time to negotiate."

www.businessweek.com