Quad ponders regional trade zones

Date: 19/10/1995

By Elizabeth Wise

AFTER France and other southern member states poured cold water on the notion of a transatlantic free-trade accord earlier this month, the EU will address the issue of regional trade zones once again at this weekend's meeting of Quadrilateral Trade Ministers.

Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan will host the Quad meeting in Yorkshire's Ripley Castle. Japanese Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, Canadian Trade Minister Roy MacLaren and US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor complete the foursome.

The informal meeting, which has been held at least twice a year since 1982, gives the trading partners a chance to rise above bilateral disputes and exchange loftier ideas on multilateral commerce. In other words, nothing concrete will happen, say most officials.

But the ministers will examine whether the growing trend towards establishing regional trading blocs - such as the trade zone with Mediterranean nations planned by the EU - risks undermining the work of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

“We need to see how they will fit into the WTO,” said one EU official. “We will need clear ideas.”

The Quad will also begin preparations for the December 1996 meeting of more than 116 member nations of the WTO in Singapore - the first of its kind since the organisation took over administration of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on 1 January this year.

“We want to come home from Yorkshire with clearer ideas of how to make a success of Singapore,” said an official. “This is the private beginning of a very important process.”

Canadian diplomats said Quad ministers would examine why the WTO got off to such a rocky start and study how to keep it from foundering. They will also look at, but not negotiate, proceedings currently going through the WTO such as those on financial services and telecommunications.

“You may well not see much smoke out of the Quad,” said one EU official.

This month's meeting is not overshadowed by diplomatic tangles on the scale of the US-Japan auto dispute that marred the last Quad meeting. But all the partners have trading altercations over goods from paper pulp and camera film to auto parts or over policies such as currency values.

The ministers may avoid them, but experts will negotiate on the sidelines.

The latest US-Japan commotion concerns accusations of CIA spying on talks between Tokyo's trade minister and Japanese car dealers. CIA operatives allegedly reported the meeting's content to US trade negotiators at WTO headquarters in Geneva.

The EU has problems with Japanese cars, too.

The Union has just renegotiated its 1995 import quotas, allowing fewer Japanese cars into the EU than had previously been promised.

EU governments are also currently deciding how to tax Japanese television cameras which they claim are being dumped on European markets.

The EU and the US are still arguing over bananas. Last week Washington rejected the EU's most recent plans to modify its banana-import regime, saying it still discriminated against American banana exporters. Washington is also threatening the EU with WTO action unless it drops its ban on importing hormone-treated meat from the US.

The North American neighbours also have domestic problems over grain imports and fish.

Japan, Canada and the US are taking the Union to task over import duty changes Austria, Finland and Sweden underwent when the three joined the EU last year.