Moore not banking on G.A.T.T. talks

Press, 5 December 1988, Page 5

Moore not banking on G.A.T.T. talks

By

BRENDON BURNS,

political reporter

A critical meeting on reform of world trade rules to be held next week does not elicit overwhelming optimism from the Minister of External Relations and Trade, Mr Moore.

He left today to attend the G.A.T.T. meeting in Montreal. Mr Moore said the latest cables from New Zealand diplomats in Geneva, headquarters of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were not overly positive.

The latest G.A.T.T. round reviewing international trade rules began two years ago and has two more years to run.

New Zealand is a member of the 13-nation Cairns group which is putting forward a proposal for an immediate freeze on further application of trade-damaging policies, such as subsidies and protective barriers.

It also wants existing trade-distorting policies to be ended over the next two years and political decisions to make reforms.

Mr Moore said the European Community might argue that it had made cuts in agricultural production. Japan might point to price increases in its highly protected domestic rice industry.

But New Zealand would

say that such measures were not enough. Overhanging the Montreal meeting would be the threat of a United States/European Community trade war, brought on by a European ban on hormones in United States meat exports. However, there were some bright prospects, said Mr Moore.

The European Community had cut farm production. Canada’s Government had recently been reelected on a platform of freer trade. The election of George Bush as Presi-. dent indicated a continuation of the United States’ move towards more liberal trade policies. But there did remain, as always, the prospect of the G.A.T.T. round falling apart. “There’s always been these predictions that the wheels would fall off,” he said.

“We stumble into the future.”

New Zealand would seek as much progress as possible in trade reform.

But if there were an unsatisfactory outcome at the Montreal meeting, Mr Moore said this would encourage the development of regional trading blocs at the expense of multilateral trade. Trade Ministers from more than 96 countries will attend next week’s meeting.