GENEVA — A U.S. proposal in the Doha global trade talks that seeks to reduce costly and cumbersome labeling requirements for textiles, apparel, footwear and travel goods received broad support during a round of negotiations last week, senior trade diplomats said.
Industry experts estimate diverse labeling requirements in different markets around the world can add up to $1 per item.
The proposal seeks to lower labeling costs for businesses by replacing the existing myriad of requirements and criteria for different markets with a more basic system, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“Things are beginning to move, but we’re not quite there,” the official said.
The thrust of the U.S. plan calls for information requirements for permanent labels not to go beyond country of origin, fiber content, care instructions and consumer safety details for textile and apparel, as well as country of origin for footwear and travel goods.
The Doha talks, which are intended to reduce tariffs worldwide and help developing nations, collapsed in July, largely over farm trade differences. However, they resumed in January after the intervention of world leaders, including President Bush.
A breakthrough on the farm trade issue involving government subsidies would also help expedite progress toward a package deal that includes lowering tariffs and also nontariff barriers for industrial goods, trade experts said.
Pursuing this objective, U.S. Trade Rep. Susan Schwab met in Geneva on Monday with WTO director-general Pascal Lamy and held talks with European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim. On Sunday evening, Schwab met with Kamal Nath, India’s commerce and industry minister.
A USTR spokesman described the discussions as “constructive,” though no breakthrough deal emerged.
The U.S. labeling proposal had gained “reasonable support,” said ambassador Don Stephenson, the Canadian chairman of the Non-agricultural Market Access segment of the Doha talks.
The European Union, which has put forward its own labeling proposal, was particularly supportive of the U.S. The idea is to merge the U.S. proposal with one from the European Union to be used as the benchmark negotiating text, according to U.S. and Western trade envoys.
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The EU plan also calls for uniform coverage for labeling requirements and minimizing compulsory requirements. Japan and Argentina raised some technical concerns, but no delegation expressed any outright opposition to the proposed U.S. or EU texts, trade officials taking part in the closed-door session said.