U.S. And E.E.C. Delay Deal

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30541, 9 September 1964, Page 17

U.S. And E.E.C. Delay Deal

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, September 8.

Further postponement of the Kennedy round trade negotiations is now taken for granted, says the Geneva correspondent of the “Financial Times.”

One of the first decisions that the negotiators are expected to take when they resume later this month is to delay the date for offers and exceptions lists from November 16 to some time in December. When the Kennedy round was officially inaugurated on May 4, G.A.T.T. ministers

named September 10 as the date for the main trading nations to put their tariffcutting offers on the table. The latest postponement is due mainly to the difficulty of obtaining the newlyelected president’s consideration and approval of the United States offers and exceptions in the week after the American elections. The E.E.C. commission is not expected to raise objections to the postponement, nor is the British Government. It will give more time for settlement of the dispute between the E.E.C. and the United States over agriculture, which was. left unresolved when the negotiations adjourned for the summer holidays and which is the main obstacle holding up the real bargaining. The United States has made it clear that it is unwilling to table its offers for cutting tariffs on industrial products, until the E.E.C. grants some kind of market access assurance to the United States agricultural producers. Commonwealth and other agricultural exporters support the United States demand. Attention is now focussed on the E.E.C. council of ministers. They must either alter the mandate of the commissioner’s negotiators or allow them enough flexibility to come to terms with the United States on adapting the community’s complicated price and subsidy mechanism for farm products to the Kennedy round requirement of trade liberalisation. Until they do, no progress can be made within G.A.T.T., and it is unlikely that any meetings will be called.