Erstellt am: 30.01.2007 Autor: Bisher nicht definiert Status: Bisher nicht definiert
Davos revives Doha: Liberalized world trade trumps bilateral talk
Davos in late January is a place to test the international consensus for big ideas that aren’t always compatible. This year’s World Economic Forum at the Swiss ski resort seemed to pit the elusive quest for a comprehensive liberalization of worldwide trade against a narrower, German-sponsored idea for bilateral commercial ties between the EU and the United States.
The early winner by consensus looks like the multilateral approach preferred by conferees from several large developing countries. On the fringe of the Davos forum, representatives of about 30 countries belonging to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva huddled to consider a resumption of the Doha round of world trade talks, which had collapsed last June amid disputes over agricultural subsidies.
Even a tentative timetable for the unexpected Doha revival was floated. Draft negotiating proposals could be discussed at the EU-U.S. summit in Washington in April so that they may later be endorsed at the G8 meeting that Germany will host this June, according to reports from Davos. But Pascal Lamy, the WTO boss, cautioned that the trade impasse cannot be broken without new positions from the United States, the EU and the blocks of developing countries led by Brazil and India.
Difficult tradeoffs would be required for this. The EU and the United States, for example, might have to make significant concessions on opening their subsidized agricultural markets to farm products from the developing countries in return for reductions in tariffs on their industrial exports.
Although the fresh optimism for the WTO approach at Davos eclipsed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s keynote proposal for closer transatlantic economic cooperation, it was this essentially bilateral alternative that probably provided the needed Doha catalyst. Conferees from India and China, for example, registered the general dismay of developing economies about any incipient customs union between the United States and the EU. “Clearly a pact of the developed world against the developing countries,” was how one Chinese business executive described it.
Merkel had opened the forum by promoting her idea of transatlantic economic cooperation with bilateral talks aimed at developing “similar domestic market structures” in the EU and the United States. Specific goals could include common standards for automobiles, laws for the chemical industry, rules for patent registrations, regulations for securities exchanges and transparency rules for financial markets. Transatlantic standards for optics and digital technology have also been under study in Germany.
The provocative idea of a customs union between Europe and the United States currently enjoys considerable support within some German business associations. But U.S. enthusiasm for this vision was reportedly muted when Merkel visited Washington in early January. And naturally, important Asian and South American countries are alarmed by the prospect of being excluded. So, the transatlantic goals actually mentioned at Davos were comparatively modest. And Merkel sought to reassure skeptics that all countries which support free trade and investment could somehow take part in a North American initiative.
The German chancellor also made an appeal for the WTO process, for globalization and for G8 unity on policies toward global warming and energy efficiency, saying that the large developing countries should be included in this effort. Merkel’s recommendations carry additional weight because she currently holds both the rotating EU council presidency and the G8 chair. From the EU and German vantage point, though, a bit more transatlantic business cooperation would be especially helpful at this point.
The runup to the Davos forum, for example, was marred by news reports of a U.S. campaign to drive European banks out of Iran with vague threats to their vital U.S. business interests. This fresh exercise in U.S. extraterritoriality at the company level had added Commerzbank to the list of important European banks which have felt compelled to discontinue their dollar-settlement businesses in Iran, an important market. According to accounts in Handelsblatt newspaper, German business leaders and government officials were not amused.
And this is only the latest in a series of such extraterritorial insults to the sovereignty of European countries. Brussels has recently been at odds with Washington, for example, on the surrender of ostensibly private data on European banking transactions and on airline passengers to U.S. authorities. And there is a continuing tug-of- war over such vital matters as accounting standards and the control of hedge funds.
Riding a massive wave of liquidity, U.S. funds and private equity firms have been positioning themselves in the meantime to create economic facts in Europe. The takeover of Euronext by New York Stock Exchange and the possible acquisition of the London Stock Exchange by Nasdaq raise the issue of whose financial standards and regulations will prevail on the old continent in the end. The German-EU campaign for more transatlantic economic cooperation could be the beginning of a compromise. But it is far from clear whether this unequal test of political will can be resolved to Europe’s satisfaction by some transatlantic handshake on business standards or financial regulations.
