Q I had a question on the trade discussions yesterday at the summit. The Europeans have said that both sides have agreed to put forward new agriculture offers in the Doha Round talks. Is that a correct characterization of what occurred in the summit meetings yesterday?
MR. HADLEY: What we have said, and what the President reaffirmed, is that we made a very forthcoming proposal with respect to tariffs, and particularly tariffs in the agricultural area and trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. It was a very ambitious proposal. The President did it in order to try and get the negotiations going. But when he made that proposal, he made it very clear that our kind of boldness needs to be matched by boldness on the part of the other sides -- that is to say from Europe and from the G20 on agriculture, but also we need a little bit of boldness and courage in the areas of services and non-agricultural products. And our take is we have seen some proposals, but not of the kind of commensurate scale as the one that we made, and that's what we need to see. We need to see it from the G20 and from Europe with respect to agriculture; we need to see it from a variety of countries on services and non-agricultural products.
So we know that we're in the zone of where we can get what we ought to have, which is an ambitious Doha Round that gets tariffs down. Because, remember, the principal beneficiaries of this Doha Round are going to be developing countries. That's why it's called the Development Round for Doha. And in order for us to do that and to achieve that kind of result, and make the most of this opportunity, people have to be ambitious. And the President has been ambitious, has made a bold opening move, and we need other parties to make comparable moves of similar boldness, so that we know that we're really going to try and do this and achieve what is possible here. Then we can get into the details of negotiation. That's what we need to see next.
seen at 01:19, 22 June
in
Whitehouse Press Briefings.
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