'We’re on a collision course with E.E.C.’

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 6

'We’re on a collision course with E.E.C.’

NZPA Paris The United States Agriculture Secretary, Mr John Block said yesterday that theUnited States would continue its attack on Euorpean Common Market farm subsidies, and renewed a threat to dump surplus dairy products on world markets. Mr Block was speaking to reporters before Agriculture Ministers of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development opened talks in Paris today. He said, that Washington had to find ways of disposing of American surpluses if the European Economic Community continued to squeeze it out of markets through its subsidy system. “We are on a collision course with the E.E.C. We must compete with them ... I do not know what else we can do.” Washington would for the time being continue talks on the subject but he declined to say how longs the United States would give the E.E.C. to amend the system, which allows Common Market producers to sell food on

the cheaper world market. Mr Block said that Washington would argue its case at today’s meeting of Agriculture Ministers from the 24 main Western Powers and at high-level talks in Brussels next week between senior American and Community officials. American farm prices were at their lowest level since the 1930 s and Washington had to recover markets lost to the E.E.C., he said. In London Washington’s delegation to a meeting of the International Wheat Council has told exporting member nations that it is resolved to fight the sale of subsidised wheat. Richard Smith, administrator of the United States Department of Agriculture’s foreign agricultural service and leader of the delegation to the Wheat Council’s session in London, told the council: “I believe it would be a tremendous miscalculation to underestimate the political force in the United States that now lies behind our efforts to try and get the situation changed.

“In almost 24 years working in this field, I have never seen the agricultural community, the Congress, and the Administration with such a unanimous feeling that this is an issue that must be resolved.” He referred to last' week’s talks in Geneva with European Economic Community countries and others now subsidising their exports. “We now know the results of these meetings, which, in essence, was very little progress on the issue of export subsidies,” Mr Smith said. But an E.E.C. spokesman asserted that the United States subsidised wheat exports by Government credits blended with United States guaranteed private credits which, he said, were tantamount to subsidies. “The United States has just concluded a 1.7 million metric tons shipment of grain to Morocco, traditionally an E.E.C. client, under this soft credit scheme. And I must point out that Morocco’s annual requirement is 1.8 million tons,” he said.