MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be starting in
just a few moments. Well, thank you all for coming. We have here today US trade representative Robert Zoellick. He will give a brief opening remarks and then he’ll take your questions. We will be calling on you and if you ask a question, if you could please identify yourself and your news organization and if we could ask everyone to turn off their cell phones please, that would be appreciated. Thank you. Ambassador Zoellick?
ZOELLICK: Well, let me begin by thanking all of you
for staying with us. I learned something that many of you who perhaps operate in
Geneva knew already which is that the WTO has an
unusual practice: they do all their work at night. And indeed it’s even more the
case since I see we’re August 1 in Europe so all of you are supposed to be on
vacation.
The first week in January, I wrote a letter
to all Trade Ministers in the World Trade Organization, urging that the year
2004 not be a lost year for the Doha global trade negotiations.
Tonight, 147 economies have ensured that 2004
will go down as a productive year for the Doha trade negotiations.
President Bush confounded conventional wisdom
by empowering me and my colleagues in the Administration to make trade success a
priority, even in an election year, because he believes that open markets build
stronger economies and help create jobs in the
United
States and opportunity around the
world.
Today’s decision is a crucial step for global
trade. After the detour in
Cancun, we have put these WTO negotiations back on
track. We have laid out a map for
the road ahead. And next we’re
going to have to negotiate the speed limits for how far and how fast we will
lower trade barriers to growth and development.
We’re advancing a strategic economic
opportunity… an opportunity now to combine an upturn in global economic growth
with global reduction in barriers to trade, so that we can deepen, broaden and
extend this economic expansion.
But there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Today’s framework is a milestone.
Just consider some of the important decisions we’ve taken this week.
In Agriculture, we’ve agreed to make historic
reforms in global agricultural trade.
This agreed framework envisions the complete elimination of agricultural
export subsidies, which the United
States and others have been seeking for decades. It
envisions new disciplines on export credits and, for the first time, on state
trading enterprises.
The preservation of disciplined food aid
programs for humanitarian and development needs. A global commitment to harmonize cuts in
global trade-distorting farm subsidy programs, to ensure that countries with
higher subsidies are subject to deeper cuts, a goal long sought by the
U.S. to level the playing field with the European
Union and Japan.
In fact, our new framework would cut allowed
domestic support for agriculture more in the first year than was done in the
entire Uruguay Round. The agreement would also open markets for farm products,
with a commitment – for the first time in agriculture – to the concept that
higher tariffs have to face bigger cuts.
The package also commits all of us to
substantial improvements in market access for all agriculture products, an
important principle for a diversified farm producer like the
United
States.
And we worked in an excellent spirit with our
partners in West
Africa to produce a
good approach to open markets for cotton ambitiously and expeditiously within
the agriculture negotiations. But
the text also recognizes the unique development needs of these economies; and
the United
States is proud to already assist them with
innovative programs to combine aid and trade.
In manufactured products, which account for
nearly 60% of all global trade, we have agreed to work towards expanded market
access in everything from cars to computers to consumer goods. We’ll see broad
cuts in tariffs through a formula that would cut higher tariffs faster,
supplemented by the possibility of complete elimination of tariffs in key
sectors. And we’ll undertake new work in the area of non-tariff barriers and
increase the important area for companies around the world.
In the area of services, we’ve agreed to
intensify our negotiations to open services markets, which now account for over
half of most of our economies, both developed and developing. And importantly, we’ve made clear that
services are definitely on par with agriculture and manufacturing as a “core”
market access area.
Finally, an area that hasn’t gotten as much
attention but I believe will provide tremendous benefits for small businesses,
is that we’re launching negotiations on trade facilitation. What this means is that we’ll try to cut
the red tape and reduce the cost of selling into some countries by perhaps 5, or
10 or 15%. We’ll seek expedited
customs treatment for express deliveries, and to improve the often Byzantine
customs procedures that cause shipments delay and frustration for small
exporters.
In summary, we’ve come a very long way since
Cancun.
We’ve taken an important step toward opening markets and creating new
opportunities. We have much left to
do. But we can build on the good
work of this week and we can deliver a result that will make life better for
millions of our citizens, in developed and developing countries
alike.
To close, I hope you’ll permit me to thank
the extraordinary team that has worked with me day and night – I should say
nights, early mornings, in fact around the clock – especially from the office of
the Trade Representative but also from the Department of Agriculture.
In particular, I want to express my deep
appreciation for the leadership and the skill of the USTR Deputies here with
me: Linnet Deily, who’s here as our
deputy in Geneva, Peter Allgeier, and Al Johnson – and the
indefatigable head of our WTO team, Dorothy Dwoskin.
Undersecretary of Agriculture J.B. Penn and
his team also worked with us extremely closely with the good spirit, the
cooperation that we’ve come to expect from Secretary Veneman and her
team.
I also want to thank…there are many others,
as Pascal, said from around the world of course starting with the Director
General. But I want to express my respect in particular for the hard work of my
Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim, who played a key role in this result. And,
of course, I could not close without thanking Pascal Lamy, the EU Commissioner
for Trade, who has been an extraordinary partner. His skill, his strong sense of public
purpose, and, I have to say his political courage were fundamental to our
success. Pascal’s accomplishments
and his service and I might add his contributions to trans-Atlantic relations
have given him a place in that special corps of European leaders.
So thank you. I’ll be pleased to take your
questions. And could you mention your name and
organization.
REPORTER: Jamil Chade, O Estado de Sao Paulo,
Brazil. In Cancun you mentioned that there were can do and
“won’t do” countries, how do you classify what happened here and how different
was the G-20 behavior this time than was in Cancun when some critics said it was not a
constructive element. Thank you.
ZOELLICK: Well, to start, I guess we “did do.” So it’s
“can done.” [laughter] And as I said in my remarks, I think Minister Amorim, and
I want to say his team too, were part of that process. There was a question, I
think, for the Director General about sort of the difference with
Cancun and it made me reflect. You know, I think
one of the aspects is that at first people recognized our point that I’ve
stressed since the first part of the year when I was trying to revive this
process which is that Cancun was a lost opportunity. It wasn’t a success.
Didn’t do anybody any good and so I think it helped bring a group of people you
know to the fore to try to make this work. And I think Minister Amorim and his
team were part of that group. There’re others. We had some excellent leadership
from a number of the African countries that have helped pull together a
disparate group to try to accomplish something.
A second thing that I thought was recognition
on the substantive side. In Cancun, I think trying to move the four
Singapore issues was too much particularly for a
number of the developing countries. Some of you follow this closely may recall
this is one of the points I made in my January letter, I suggested dropping two
of the items. And frankly, after a meeting that I had in Mombassa with the
African group in February when I was traveling around the world, I suggested we
drop the third so that was a substantive change.
The other key substantive change which was
very clear and you heard Commissioner Lamy and Commissioner Fischler, who I do
believe deserves strong compliments for his efforts in farm reform in the
European Union, is that we had to eliminate export subsidies. That was a sine
qua non of moving forward. So there was a substantive series of lessons.
Then on the procedural part, there’s no doubt
this is an unwieldy organization and so it very much depends on a network of
countries stepping forward, part of that depends on the ministers’ inclination,
part of it depends on the empowerment that they get from their leaders. As I
mentioned, I think a lot of people were surprised at the start of the year when
the United
States, facing an election, said we want to push
this forward. We don’t want it to be a lost year. And that comes because I think
the world knows my boss is pretty strong in his commitments on moving things
forward. And he was committed to do this. And so I think the, in particular,
while there’re a number of countries in the G-20 and obviously Minister Nath
worked very closely with us in the FIPs group from India, I think Brazil is
particularly to be complimented because it’s still an unwieldy group. When we
were in the negotiations, there was some times a position by the G-20, and
sometimes a G-20 member was a member of the G-33 so sometimes there’d be a
different position. This is inherent in the nature of the challenge. Just like
Africa group members can be LDC members. And I
think on many occasions Brazil and Minister Amorim stepped forward with the
position in agreement with other things we’d done. And I think that made it a
little harder for others not to come along while they maintained their own
sovereign decisions. So as I said I think Celso personally a good partner,
Clodoaldo the undersecretary did a fantastic job. Felippe, the Ambassador here,
does very good close work with us so it was a good team effort.
Yes?
REPORTER:
Ian Swanson with Inside US Trade. Ambassador Zoellick, are you at all
disappointed with the outcome on industrial market access, given the fact that
the text seems to have to been weakened a bit since Thursday with the addition
of this language actually into the annex. And what do you think needs to happen
in the next 18 months in order to make real improvements in market
access.
ZOELLICK: Wasn’t that the same question you asked
Lamy? Someone did? Oh. I was sitting in the back. No, I’m not at all
disappointed. And I’d basically associate myself with Pascal’s answer.
Look, here’s how I would analyze that issue.
We had a reasonably good text in Cancun in market access. From the
U.S. point of view, I think this is a point that
Pascal might have mentioned, there were three core elements that we definitely
wanted to preserve. We not only wanted a formula, but we wanted a non-linear
formula because that’s the key principle of cutting more from higher tariffs. If
you look at the text, it’s line by line as well. Now, and that was one key
element, the other key element is the
United
States has been a strong supporter of sectoral
initiatives. Some of you that cover this know the power that the ITA, the
Information Technology Agreement, had negotiated in the late 90’s, it’s helped
developed and developing countries alike and sort of the information technology
business around the world with the assembly operations as well as on the R&D
side.
And then the third element was the one I
mentioned non-tariff barriers which I get increasing attention from our
industries because as the world gets more deeply integrated some of these issues
to be addressed within sectors and across sectors become very, very important.
Now, to move ahead the manufacturing goods issues which recall as I mentioned
still represent 60 % of world trade, we knew we had to move agriculture and that
was going to be a challenge because we knew it would take until the last, gee I
hoped evening or late night, but I found early morning for agriculture. And so
there was always going to be the challenge that some countries would be
reluctant to engage as much on the goods topic and so that led to the idea by
Ambassador Johannson of Iceland, I believe, to suggest that with this
chapeau.
Now I was quite active in the internal
process trying to refine that chapeau for some of the interested, the Africa
group, there’s point that Brazil raised on question of sectorals, a topic I had
covered in my January letter about how we need to move from mandatory sectorals
to a critical mass and so frankly, I always thought the logic of putting that in
the first point made sense and it certainly helped the Africa group move
forward. And we were quite careful to, if you parse the words closely, you’ll
see there’s words like focus on the specifics and there were, of course, some
runs that taking out those sort of words which didn’t happen. So I think that’s
a very important product for us as you heard for the European Union as well. We
have more, Pascal uses the term offensive I’m not as comfortable with that term
but anyways, sort of market opening efforts in agriculture than the European
Union might but we certainly want to press forward in goods and services as
well.
Now, I think the second part of your question
goes to sort of what’s next? There will certainly be hard work ahead in terms of
developing that formula. There had been earlier work done, even before
Cancun in terms of ideas for that formula, there’ll
be work done in terms of trying to determine what the sectorals will look like
and what the critical mass will be in them. There’s actually been some good work
done already on the non-tariff barriers. And this is a way where frankly in a
kind of more modern WTO, we’re going to need to work increasingly, we all draw
on our private sectors give us some good sense of what the real challenges are
and many of these private sectors deal, operate in developed, developing
countries, they help us work through some of these issues. That’s why I suggest
trade facilitation might be the real sleeper benefit from this round. We found
that in APEC, and in our bilateral agreements, can be very important.
So there’s no doubt that there’s challenging
work ahead but I think the structure, like the structure in agriculture is a
positive one and definitely suits the interests that we came into this part of
the negotiation wanting to achieve.
Let me see…anybody over here? No?
REPORTER:
Abdel Nabi, Kuweit News Agency.
Ambassador Zoellick, Sir, you must have been hearing about the NGOs and
their reactions to the role of the United States during the past five days in
the negotiations and they have said that there was arm twisting, there was many
kinds of influences, of course we don’t know them. Could you react to that
position of the NGOs? They were
very critical of the US role in the
negotiations.
ZOELLICK:
Twisting my arm or somebody elses?
Well to be honest, I really didn’t know about the criticism, but that’s
because last night we finished about 7 a.m. and I got about an hour’s sleep
before trying to close agriculture and then move on to the NAMA and the other
issues, and the night before that I think it was, was it, finishing with cotton
at four or five. So I really
haven’t been too much in the outside world. I will say I managed to run out around
with what looked like a lot of NGOs, but I think were a lot of people in the
street just having a good time. [laugher] So I don’t know. They didn’t bother me on my run. But maybe they didn’t know who I
was. I shouldn’t have warn them for
the morning I guess.
Look, this is an organization that operates
by consensus. And you have to work
very closely with countries.
Frankly one of the points that has been very important to me is that I
have been fortunate to build a number of strong personal relationships with
ministers, ambassadors from countries, developed and developing, and I continue
to build more. And this is actually
an interesting point about some of the free trade agreements that we are doing
or have done. It helps sort of build a cadre that you can go to for help. And I think the key, to give you some
insight on this, is that nobody can twist anybodies’ arm. You have to agree on something. You have to sort of get people to treat
them with respect and recognize that there is a common interest in moving
forward. And so I can just think of
so many examples. Last night when
we were, you saw the agriculture text that first came out. Well then, what happened, well you had a
group of 25-30 countries, often representing many others, suggest the types of
changes that they wanted to have.
And then people would oppose them. And my good colleague Al Johnson was
sitting behind me and did me a great service. I’ve got it right straight in my pocket.
He gave me a little list of what we thought might be a package. He wrote it in red. I marked OK. I then worked with some of these other
key ministers, Lamy, Amorim, the Chair, and frankly started thinking from what I
heard where we could kind of put together a package. Now that involved sitting down with my
Chinese counterparts and working out a particular issue with them. It met a
particular concern for Argentina.
Obviously issues for India. And that was building on the FIPS process
that you’ve heard about of trying to do things.
Probably the most warm one is the one that we
spent about 20 hours with the West African ministers. And that one really started a little
earlier, because they had visited the
United
States.
I tried to see them in Mauritius about two weeks ago, but they weren’t
there. I met their
Ambassadors. And in just one more
element of supreme sacrifice, they had one day in Washington that I was there which just happened to be
my birthday on Sunday and we got together and we talked about these issues. And
I suspect before the end of the year I’ll even have a visit to
West
Africa. So these are
the things. You know Mauritius. The Mauritian team was fantastic here. They really were. Now I was glad I had a chance to visit
Mauritius recently and I was talking with Minister
Cuttarce but also his Ambassador that did a good job. We got a lot of help from the Moroccan
minister. We just completed a free trade agreement with
Morocco.
A lot of the African countries frankly had a very positive attitude
towards the United
States because, as the
US reporters here know, we just managed to pass
an extension for AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. That is very
important to them.
So all of these things intersect together.
And perhaps, what is not as generally appreciated is that these jobs are as much
a question of diplomacy as they are sort of poker game, give and take. It is trying to solve problems. And you
can’t do that by twisting arms.
Now, where it does come in, and you may be interested in the mechanics of
this, is that for example when this package was put together on agriculture,
there is some point with 147 players that you have to say this is what we can
do, and we’ve got to end at this point.
And so it was the idea, and this is never easy, to say, we take this as a
package, or not. And that is the decision that countries had to make. So my sense, particularly in the case of
the West Africans, was that we left with warmer ties and good feelings about the
process and at least from the warmth of relations I’ve had with many of the
ministers here, I’ve had a similar sense.
So actually its an interesting dynamic. Yes.
REPORTER:
Ambassador Zoellick, just to come back to the agricultural negotiations
in which you have so intensively all kinds of positions…
ZOELLICK:
I think you’d better give your name and association.
REPORTER:
I’m sorry, my name is D. Ravi Kanth, I represent Washington Trade
Daily.
ZOELLICK:
Formerly Trade and Tariff Daily but we are trying to put the tariffs out
of business, right?
REPORTER:
Yes, this is a very difficult question. I find it difficult to answer. But my question relates to the
agriculture text, in which you have given in to Argentineans on export taxes,
India on de minimus, China on
developing country STEs and so many things you sort of did part with in last
night’s Green Room meeting. What
exactly did the U.S. get in this agriculture package? It is not very clear. And secondly, there is an assumption
that this particular round is not so much about market access in agriculture, it
is just about export competition. Because if you see the kind of
conditionalities that are attached in market access, there is no real market
penetration anybody can get into your market or you can get into the developing
countries market. Is
that correct?
ZOELLICK:
Uh, No. But know I’ll tell
you why. First off, your first question was, what did we get out of it. Well, as I emphasized, the
United
States has been pushing for the elimination of
export subsidies for a very long time.
I worked on the Uruguay Round and that was a big, big hope. And again, I complement our European
colleagues for their work, but they are the only real big export
subsidizer. They have the authority
to do five or six billion. They do
three or four billion dollars a year.
That really affects beef and dairy and sugar but it has effects on our
vegetable trade which is important which gets no subsidies, has relatively low
tariffs, so that is a big, big plus for us in the world. And that’s where when I referenced
Commissioner Lamy’s political courage, that was not an easy one for him to take
on.
The second point is in the area of domestic
subsidies, the United States again, and I remember this from the Uruguay Round,
has tried very hard to push the harmonizing principle, you know, in the amber
box which are the most trade distorting, the European level varies with exchange
rates about 80 billion dollars. The United
States is 19.1 billion dollars. No then there is de minimus and the blue. But the key point is we now have flatly
accepted, better than in Cancun, the harmonizing language and principle now
through a tiered formula. That is a
big plus for us at home.
Third, this is something that sort of shows
how the trade parts fit with reform.
We are obviously still working the blue box concept. But you see if you look at agricultural
negotiations the most egregious subsidies are export subsidies. Then there is sort of the amber box
linked to production and price. And
then there is green box, where it is delinked. The
United
States has been trying to move some from amber to
blue. And we have something called the counter cyclical payments where they are
basically no longer linked to production, but they are linked to price. That is what we are developing in
the concept of the blue box, and that concept is being developed, it is not done
yet. But we do have the CAP and
many parties are aware that will be a key area for us going forward. And then if you then connect that part
of the negotiation. We have a
framework for cuts, but he numbers are going to be depend on what we get in
market access. And we have always
emphasized, and this is where our position is quite different from the European
Union, is that we are willing to cut the subsidies. We want them to get much
closer to our levels. But we want open markets too. In fact, I’ve seen some stories about
the United
States not being a market opening player. Actually my challenge here was to create
the ability to get markets open in goods, agriculture and service. That is what
trade in the WTO should be about.
So if you parse through the language closely,
and I know you do because you cover this closely, I mention some of these
points, you are going to be covering all products. We have for the first time the
harmonizing principle in tariffs and agriculture. Now, what we weren’t able to do at this
stage is develop the particular formula.
And of course, but this is a fair part of special and differential
treatment, we had to bring along the European Union, we had to develop a
category of sensitive products. This is not new as you recall looking at the
Cancun text, that is what Pascal and I were
developing long ago. But even with
that you will see that there is an important focus about a combination of tariff
cuts and tariff rate quote increases so that every product you still have a
substantial increase in market access. That is a very important principle to be
moving forward. And remember one of
the things that divided us from some others in Cancun was that we said we want to have the same
framework for developed as for developing countries. Which we now have.
Everybody has agreed with that. But it is going to be obviously one that is less
demanding on the developing countries. So the balance is still there. If people want us to get the deep cuts
in the subsidies that would be part of the reform, and part of the reform is
also moving them to the less trade distorting elements of blue and green, then
we are going to have to get market access. Now you mentioned a couple of other
elements I just want to highlight.
Or another part, for example, we are delighted that -- state trading
enterprise has been a major challenge for us, we have an understanding in our
bilateral agreement with Australia to move on to elimination at a later point,
and now we’ve got the Canadian Wheat Board. That is going to be a very sensitive
issue for Canada. But that is going to be something we are
going to need to try to pursue in the negotiations. You also mentioned state
trading enterprises. We like the language we worked out with
China. But that is a good example of the problem
solving, is they described what they were trying to do and if you look closely
at their language, we worked out something that is really not so much related to
the expert purposes as it is to some of their development needs. Their concern is with hundreds of
millions of peasants that they have some ability to use those mechanisms to
prevent real problems in their rural areas. This is an issue we had to deal with
with India as well. So you raised the example of de minimus. It was a very important principle for
us, that if we were going to be cutting de minimus, that others were at least in
the negotiation. Now India has emphasized, it says – by the way the de minimus level is 10 percent, they
only probably use about 1 percent – and they emphasize that theirs is for
subsistence farmers. We are not
worried about that, we are worried about some other developing countries that
might have commercial programs.
REPORTER:
Such as?
ZOELLICK:
Other countries. [laugher]
Other more commercial competitive countries in agriculture. And so that is a good example. This was
very important to Minister Nath so we tried to work it out, and if you look at
the language, pretty tight language, has to be almost all in subsistence farming
or resource poor farming. So that
is a good example of you solve somebody’s problem and you maintain you focus on
your core principles. I probably should take just one more. I see people yawning, so goodness
knows.
IN FRENCH:
I will ask you the same question I asked your friend Mr. Lamy. Mr. Zoellick, what are the guarantees,
because it is true that the Africans have said here in this same place said that
they were satisfied, but we know that in the month of September you will see one
another again. What are the American guarantees because the Africans are
expecting you to act in good faith.
Thank you very much.
Especially on cotton…
ZOELLICK:
No, I heard your earlier question that’s why I called on you to make
sure. We’ve been having an
excellent group of discussions with not only the five West African countries,
including Senegal, which as you know,
Senegal wasn’t part of the original four. [unintelligible] of context, Ambassador
Deily, who’s back there, went to Benin as part of a development conference. And I just want to take a moment on the
development, because I think this is going to be very important. President Bush initiated a new approach
to development called the Millennium Challenge Account, which is in my view, has
the seeds of being something that could regain more support for development aid
in the United States, because it focuses development on countries that by
objective criteria have good governance policies, invest in their people, the
health and education, and also have sound economic policies. Fortunately, this shows the good support
we have in the Congress, the U.S. Trade Representative was put on the board of
that corporation, even though the original proposal didn’t have it. That’s thanks to Jim Kolbe, the head of
the appropriations subcommittee dealing with this.
Senegal, Benin and
Mali are all qualified under those
standards. So one of the things I’m
quite interested in doing is making sure that program integrates with what we’re
trying to do on the trade side.
As I mentioned, we were delighted to have
ministers from the four countries, not
Senegal, in the
United
States last week, and here our U.S. Department of
Agriculture is helping, focusing on marketing methods, biotechnology, thing
dealing with pests, and a whole host of things trying to learn together. And this will have to be a key element,
and you’ll see there’s a good reference to that in the front of the
document.
Now in the trade side, one key point that I
think we finally understood together, is that the reality of the international
trade negotiations is that you can’t break out one item. You have to be able to have a package of
items, frankly because you bring home some pluses and minuses. And I think this was a key point that we
needed to work with our West African colleagues. And I think we did. But they understandably were
concerned that cotton not be lost.
And so therefore you can see the steps that we took and the commitments
we made, including to a special subcommittee, and the commitments about
expeditious and ambitious and specific treatment. Other elements to make sure that this
fear, I wasn’t worried about it happening, but I understand for poor or smaller
countries, they’re worried about being overlooked, that we could have that
commitment to move together.
Now, let’s take one more element that hasn’t
got much attention, but we’ve started to talk about much more with our West
African colleagues - tariffs and cotton.
We share an interest with the cotton producing countries in lowering
tariffs in cotton. One of the
points that the West African ministers got a much better sense of on their visit
to the United
States is what’s going to happen in the cotton
textile trade when the quotas come off at the end of the year. There’s a lot of analysis suggests that
you’re going to have a lot of cotton textile business move to a smaller group of
countries. And developing
countries, and some of those developing countries have very, very high
tariffs. So here’s a good point of
commonality, in terms of us moving forward.
Now, obviously, another key point is export
subsidies. And you can see, we
committed to eliminate all export credits over 180 days, something we did to
help support the European effort on export subsidies, and add disciplines below,
so that should really take care of the export competition pillar. And what that leaves is the domestic
subsidies. And that really comes
back to the question I just answered – which is that, look, we said at the start
of the negotiations, I can get support across my agriculture community, for very
significant cuts, on the order of 50%, if I get market access. OK? And so that gives an example of how we
try to work together.
So you asked about guarantees. And I don’t want to duck that term.
Because the Ministers talked about that with me. And I’ll tell you, I was very frank with
them as I will be with you. It is
to stay, look, I’m part of a democratic system. I can’t give a guarantee where I’ll be
next year, beyond January 20. But
what I can guarantee them is first, if we broke down again, we would waste
another 11 months as we did after Cancun.
And that did nobody any good.
At least that long I suspect we would have wasted. And the other thing that I can
guarantee, is that I’ll work with them on the issue, as I have been on the
development and the trade side, and that we can try to push together, on these
items. And I think that this is
where some of the confidence building comes in, is the sense that they could see
not only my commitment but those elsewhere in the
U.S. government, to try to help. But I want to emphasize this point. This is not an easy problem. This is not going to be a panacea. But also, and since you’re from
Senegal -
Senegal has an advantage over some of the
others. It is also diversifying
under the African Growth and Opportunity Act in to other businesses. When I was in
Mauritius in January of 2003, there were billboards
about some of the new Senegalese, sort of air transport, going to
New
York
actually, because it’s part of the expanding trading
system.
So you know part of this is the larger
picture of development and how cotton fits into it. So I’m actually, I come away with a very
warm feeling towards my colleagues, obviously they pushed very hard as I would
expect. But frankly, we spent a lot
of time trying to figure out how to solve the problems
together.
I’ve kept you too long and I’ve certainly
kept me, so thanks.
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