Press Conference
(Opening Statement Only)

Ambassador Allen Johnson
USTR Chief Agricultural Negotiator

Thursday, April 22, 2004

World Trade Organization, Geneva

Ambassador Johnson: Well first of all thank you all so much for coming today.
I apologize for running a little bit late. I’m not even sure exactly what time it is but let me just give you a little overview of at least what our thinking is at this point.

First of all we found a generally positive attitude as we’re continuing to work through and meeting with a lot of different people from a lot of different groups in trying to problem solve in moving this process forward.

I like to – every once in a while – I stand back and I reflect and I think about, if this was January 10th of this year, we probably would not be expecting ourselves to be sitting here, let alone being on the Second Agricultural session, in trying to move this process forward to a possible framework by this summer.

Obviously Ambassador Zoellick’s letter and his trip and the outreach efforts that we and others have made over the last several months has put it within the realm of the possibilities that we could make significant progress in a year that just three short months ago most people are considered to be a lost year.

I think it’s safe to say that at the last meeting we made some significant progress, both in terms that there was a positive attitude in trying to work on these issues, but also in more substantive ways that people accepted or understood a common objective of trying to get a framework, which wasn’t clear that that was everyone’s objective previously; that the framework would not have numbers in it; that the framework would be set in a context of trying to achieve consistency with the Doha Mandate so therefore not preclude the ambition that the Doha Mandate includes, as well as at the same time not over committing countries; leaving for the process of pursuing, filling in the numbers and the disciplines, in the post framework period, that people’s opportunities were still alive.

We have, I think, been successful in sort of understanding a list of issues that are outstanding and then at this meeting I think we are seeing a narrowing of that list, which again, is a positive sign in terms of understanding what the challenges are in front of us. Needless to say, from the U.S. point of view we’re being asked and expect to have reform in all three pillars; export competition, domestic support as well as market access, and in order to do that, as I think I said to this group last time, we just have a very practical sort of common sense challenge that we have to be able to go back home and sell that we’ve seen reform of others in all three areas in meaningful ways that are net benefit for U.S. agriculture.

We’ve also seen progress, I think it’s safe to say, on two out of the three pillars, export competition, domestic support, particularly, you can see more and more clearly how we might be able to work through some of these issues. There is clearly in export competition an understanding that if we’re going to succeed, that we’re going to need an end date for export subsidies or at least the recognition that there will be an end date for export subsidies and that we need some form of parallelism in order to facilitate that happening in the other areas of export competition.

Domestic support, the issues are obviously what happens in terms of the overall cut in trade distorting domestic support. Questions about how we deal with the blue box. Questions as well as what the review process is, or in ensuring that the green box is trade distorting, or non-trade distorting or minimally trade distorting policies.

In the third pillar market access, I think that we’ve seen a clarification of the issues. Again the trick is being able to get ambition consistent with the Doha Mandate of substantial improvement of market access for both developed and developing countries, which is through some combination of how we achieve it through tariff reductions and TRQ expansion, with obviously the preference being the tariff reductions achieving substantial results.

For developing countries there’s a whole series of tools in the tool box of the Cancun text that I think I have described previously, but it deals with the reality that we recognize there’ll be on the different coefficients or bracketed numbers that the developing countries will have either more lenient numbers than what the developing countries do. Obviously there exists already for many of the developing countries quite a difference between what the bound rates are and their applied rates, there’s place for SP, there’s a place for SSM, there’s a recognition that there’ll be a longer phasing period for developing countries and then there’s previsions related to LDC’s.

So again, I’ll just finish where I started and then open it up to your questions which is that in three months we’ve gone from being basically stalled in the process and an understanding or expectation that this was going to be a lost year, to having made some, what I consider to be, significant progress over the last three months. We have about three months until July, and have the opportunity to work together and to achieving a framework that everyone is comfortable with.

Obviously our mutual objective should be to maintain the ambition that was in the Doha Development Agenda. It is essential for us that we have reform in all three areas and we need to see results from others in a similar way. No one ever said that this was going to be easy. You rarely hear the words “agricultural negotiations” and “easy” or “simple” in the same sentence, regardless of what the negotiation is, my experience round the world. But we have generally felt in all of our meetings – which have been a lot – that countries are seriously trying to work this process forward and achieve results, so with that I will open it up to your questions.

(End of opening statement)