U.S. ‘offer’ to buy N.Z. butter output

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 2

U.S. ‘offer’ to buy N.Z. butter output

NZPA staff correspondent Geneva New Zealand would have to be compensated if the United States decided to sell its butter surplus on the world market, said a highranking United States trade official yesterday. “We would just have to buy their entire yearly output, or we would have somehow to make a deal with them that we woultj pay them a differential between what they could sell it for,” he said. The official, a leading member'of the United States delegation at the G.A.T.T. meeting in Geneva, told a press briefing earlier that New Zealand was the only nation which would be compensated if the United States went ahead and unloaded its agricultural surplus on the world market. “On butter, we have somehow got to take care of New Zealand if we do it,” he said. The quantity the United States had available amounted to a year’s supply

for the world, he said. Asked if other nations, such as Australia, would get compensation for losses on products like beef and wheat, the official said: “We are not offering compensation to anyone except butter to New Zealand. New Zealand is an exception.” The United States is threatening to dispose of its farm surplus if agreement is riot reached at the meeting on the controversial question of export subsidies. But the gap between United States and E.E.C, positions on the question appeared as wide as ever. The United States wants a phased reduction of export subsidies leading to their ultimate elimination. But a senior E.E.C. official, Sir Roy Denman, the Community’s representative in Washington, said in Geneva that “this was just unacceptable.” The E.E.C. stood by its commitments made in the Tokyo round of negotiations for trade liberalisation, he said.

“We got recognition that agricultural export subsidies were a fact of life,” Sir Roy said. But it was agreed that they should not be used to achieve more than an equitable share of world trade. “We have told the Americans quite bluntly that we are not prepared to go any further,” Sir Roy said. Of the possibility of the E.E.C.'s taking countermeasures if the United States started unloading its farm surplus, he said. “If we consider the Americans or anyone else are acting in contravention of the Tokyo round, we would have no hesitation in taking them to G.A.T.T.” The senior United States official who briefed journalists said that the E.E.C. was arguing that the United States was trying to get it to dismantle its Common Agricultural Policy. “I would like to say right now that that is untrue,” he said. “We are only objecting to that part of C.A.P. which involves export restitution payments.”