Bush Proposes Global Rules for Trade in Services : Trade: The services sector is booming, and the United States wants to ensure that its industries can market themselves as easily as goods.

The Bush Administration unveiled a formal proposal Tuesday that for the first time would extend global trading rules to cover the burgeoning services sector, which accounts for 68% of the U.S. economy and 90% of all new jobs in this country.

The sweeping new provisions, which Washington is putting forward at the global trade liberalization talks now under way in Geneva, are designed to guarantee that services can be marketed worldwide as easily as goods and that all firms are treated fairly.

Included in the services category are industries such as banking, insurance, construction, architecture, communications, advertising, law, consulting, transportation, equipment leasing, tourism, recreation, hotels, restaurants, medical care and engineering.

U.S. officials conceded that the effort, which Washington has been pressing with limited success since the early 1980s, is almost certain to prove controversial. Developing countries in particular fear that industrialized countries will dominate the market.

U.S. firms, on the other hand, were expected to support the plan vigorously. Harry L. Freeman, executive vice president of the American Express Co., a spokesman for the group, called the proposal “very bold and very aggressive.”

U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills said the thrust of the new plan is to establish a general framework for negotiating specific rules to govern trade in services, which currently are not covered by any international regulations.

All services would be included under the new U.S. plan unless they are specifically exempted as a result of the Geneva talks.

To make the proposal seem less threatening to developing countries, the Administration provided for a series of possible escape mechanisms under which countries would be able to exempt themselves from specific categories or provisions that they found unpalatable.

However, countries that reject too many such rules would be denied some of the benefits that the new regulations would provide. The plan also calls for establishing a new mechanism to settle disputes that may arise.

Hills and Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter also unveiled a proposal for a “substantial, progressive reduction” of farm subsidies worldwide over the next several years, which also will be placed on the table as part of the trade liberalization talks.

Essentially, the agriculture plan calls for all countries to convert their quotas and other trade barriers into numerical tariffs--which are easier to compare--and to phase out within five years all those that distort world trade.

The United States also wants to muster support for revamping existing farm subsidies so that payments to farmers are made independently of the size of the crop that they produce. U.S. officials charge that linking subsidies to crop size encourages overproduction.

And finally, the Administration wants trading countries to eliminate agricultural export subsidies, which they say enable inefficient producers often to underprice efficient growers in global markets. The plan calls for phasing out the subsidies within five years.

The plan for setting rules to cover trade in services would give all participating countries the right to market and provide services across borders, to establish offices in other countries and to send in their own personnel temporarily for maintenance and repair.

In turn, governments would agree to treat foreign firms in the same way they treat their own companies, to give them full access to government-run monopolies such as telephone companies and to phase out subsidies to domestic firms in the service sector.

They also would be required to keep their regulatory procedures open and to give foreign firms an opportunity to comment on proposed regulations before they are put into effect.

Hills said the United States wants to include all service industries in the negotiations--whether or not the United States enjoys an advantage in that particular industry. “We’re taking nothing off the table right now,” she told reporters.

Both the agriculture and the services proposals were rushed out ahead of possible rival plans from other countries, in hopes of gaining the jump on any competition and of heightening the pressure for others to present their own proposals in both areas by the end of the year.

The European Community and Canada both are working on their own proposals in the services field, but they have not yet completed drafting them. Australia and New Zealand are expected to support the U.S. plan.

The United States, which has been the major force in the 104-country talks, has been pushing for all proposals to be in by late December so the hard bargaining can begin in January, in time to wrap the negotiations up as scheduled by the end of 1990.

Besides agriculture and services, the talks also are dealing with areas such as patents and intellectual property rights and improving enforcement of trade rules generally. The sessions are taking place under the aegis of the Geneva-based General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Hills said the talks are “entering the most creative phase” and must seek ambitious goals to make progress.