Fears are growing that the United States could effectively walk away from crucial trade talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun aimed at solving the deepening economic and social crisis afflicting billions of the world’s poorest people.
As the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations entered their final hours, business leaders feared that efforts to strike a ground-breaking deal on trade distortions harming the developing world were in the balance.
A high level source in the UK delegation said: ”It’s difficult to know what the Americans want. They’re staying in their hotel. They’re behaving like the Soviet Union in the Eighties. It’s making it difficult to know what they want.”
This view has been echoed by other senior delegation members. ”It’s in nobody’s interests to see America going into its shell,” said CBI director general Digby Jones.
If the US walks away from the talks it would plunge the world into a disastrous financial crisis as it sought to strike trade deals on its own terms with individual nations.
Trade Ministers from 146 countries are poised to receive a draft text this morning of an agreement on agricultural subsidies and investment policies. They will have just 90 minutes to respond before negotiators refine a final draft.
It is understood that the European Union (EU) has yet to make any significant concessions on agriculture, although these are expected to come later today. The EU is putting pressure on the Americans to conclude a deal on cotton which will see the Bush administration drop its subsidies to farmers.
International power brokers are increasingly pre-occupied with a deepening alliance between Brazil, India and China, representing half the world’s population. Senior government officials in Mexico say this will alter the geo-political balance, and it is understood to have made Washington deeply uneasy about a new rival to challenge its economic supremacy.
A statement by ActionAid, War on Want and the World Development Movement said: ”The Brazilians have brought a sense of social justice to this conference which is a great antidote to the faux development agenda of the European Commission and the bullying behaviour by the US.” – Guardian Unlimited Â