‘Intransigent’ Nations Warned on U.S. Trade

The Reagan Administration’s top trade official bluntly served notice on U.S. trading partners today that efforts by a small group of intransigent nations to sidetrack American trade objectives could torpedo a new round of global talks.

Special Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter, in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said efforts at next week’s 92-nation conference in Uruguay to launch a new trade round could collapse. Such a new series of talks would be the eighth of their kind since the end of World War II.

“I hope we don’t have to walk out in Punte del Este,” Yeutter said. “We hope people (there) will be reasonable and rational. But we certainly are going to take a very strong and aggressive line.”

He predicted “long days and short nights” at the weeklong conference, to be held in a vacated hotel gambling casino at the seacoast resort city.

Reduced ‘Must’ List

At the same time, Yeutter indicated that the United States has reduced from five to four its list of “must” items for the Sept. 14-19 conference of the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

The four items the United States demands for any new trade round, Yeutter said, are: phasing down government agricultural subsidies; broadening GATT rules to cover trade in services like banking; a liberalization of foreign investment rules, and a new code to clamp down on counterfeiting and copyright piracy.

“There are no throw-aways. We intend to get them all,” Yeutter said.

However, speaking with reporters after the speech, he indicated that the United States would not boycott a new trade round if next week’s session fails to make progress on a fifth key U.S. objective: strengthening the GATT process for settling disputes.

Big Trade Deficit

Meanwhile today, the Commerce Department reported that the United States suffered a $36.02-billion foreign trade deficit from April through June, a slight improvement from the preceding quarter.

The department said the second-quarter deficit was down 1.2% from a $36.46-billion deficit in the January-March quarter.

Imports hit a record $90.02 billion in the April-June quarter, up 0.8% from the import level in the first quarter of the year.