CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) – Australia will walk away from world trade negotiations if global farm trade cannot be improved during the current round of talks, the government said.
Trade minister Mark Vaile said a recent meeting in Montreal to revive the talks before the World Trade Organization’s September meeting in Cancun, Mexico, had offered a glimmer of hope.
“But if we can’t achieve our ambitions – an acceptable level of improvement in the global trade of agricultural commodities compared to what we are being asked to pay in other areas – we will not agree with it and we will walk away,” Vaile said.
He said the agriculture negotiations had become deadlocked because several countries, including the European Union, Japan and Korea, wanted to retain the present formula of tariff cuts for market access.
