Global Business Groups Warn Trade Talks Are Near Collapse

World trade talks are teetering on the brink of collapse, global business leaders warned Tuesday, three months ahead of a World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong that could make or break plans to reach a deal by the end of 2006.

“We are deeply concerned that the Doha Development Agenda is on the verge of failure,” leading business groups from the United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada, Japan and Mexico said in a joint statement on the status of global negotiations launched four years ago in Doha, Qatar.

“Time is running out for members to agree on key negotiating issues before December of this year. The Hong Kong Ministerial conference is at risk of becoming the next Cancun or Seattle,” the business groups said, referring to failed WTO ministerial meetings in 2003 and 1999, respectively.

The blunt warning follows months of little or no progress on agriculture and other issues at the core of the WTO negotiations. The failure of WTO members to agree in July on the first outline of a ministerial declaration for the Hong Kong meeting “has deepened the crisis,” the business groups said.

The U.S. Business Roundtable, the European Round Table of Industrialists, Japan’s Nippon Keidanren and business groups in Australia, Canada and Mexico signed the joint statement, which they said would be the first in a series of coordinated activities aimed at reviving the trade talks.

WTO members are struggling with agricultural issues at the heart of the talks. U.S. farmers, for example, are unwilling to accept deep cuts in domestic farm payments unless European farm subsidies are cut even further and developing countries such as Brazil are required to lower farm tariffs.