Hills’ Warning: Action in Trade Talks Is Urgent

U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills tried Wednesday to impart a sense of urgency to stalled trade talks by predicting “gravely diminished prosperity for all” if negotiations fail.

Hills’ warning came at the start of three days of negotiations with trade ministers from Japan, the 12-nation European Community and Canada.

The officials gathered at a resort north of here to search for ways to break an impasse in a four-year effort to overhaul the rules governing the world trading system.

The talks are designed to lower a variety of barriers to trade in agriculture, textiles and other manufactured goods, and services such as banking and investment.

The positions of opposing parties have become so entrenched that many fear failure for the talks being held under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Such an outcome would deal a blow to the Administration’s hopes for expanding export opportunities for U.S. farmers and businesses as a way of whittling down America’s huge trade deficit, which has topped $100 billion for six years.

Hills, speaking to a group of business writers before the talks opened, called the negotiations “the last, best chance this century to create the trading rules we so sorely need for the next century.”