WASHINGTON — South Korean trade negotiators turned down a U.S. offer to speed up the removal of tariffs on $1.35 billion in apparel and textile imports during a fourth round of talks to hammer out a free trade agreement between the two countries.
The textile portion of the negotiations was scheduled to run three days, but representatives from the two countries stopped after two days, leaving a number of key issues to be resolved. The overall talks, which ran from Oct. 23 to 27, showed better progress than in the textile area and two more rounds were scheduled.
“We came to Jeju, [South Korea], with an improved offer on textiles,” said Wendy Cutler, the Bush administration’s chief negotiator for the talks. “The [South] Koreans chose to give it back to us. I can only conclude that they were disappointed with the offer, but still, we were quite surprised by that move.”
South Korea shipped $1.8 billion worth of apparel and textiles to the U.S. during the 12 months ended Aug. 31.
The two sides also discussed a textiles safeguard provision, which is common in such trade agreements, and strengthened Customs procedures.
“The [South] Korean proposals in those areas were quite disappointing to us,” said Cutler.
The rule of origin, a perennial area of dispute in the textile realm, was also discussed, but distance remains between the two sides. U.S. negotiators are pushing for a yarn-forward rule. Such a provision generally requires goods getting preferential treatment to be made of materials from one of the countries in the agreement.
“Loopholes that allow third-party countries to come in and get duty-free treatment damage the U.S. industry,” said a spokesman for the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, which supports a yarn-forward rule of origin.
Negotiators are racing against the clock to reach an agreement that can be wrapped up and submitted to Congress before President Bush’s trade promotion authority expires July 1.
A fifth round of talks is scheduled to be held in Big Sky, Mont., the week of Dec. 4. Another round will then be held in South Korea the following month.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
“In sum, the United States was pleased with the good and steady progress we made last week in a wide range of areas,” said Cutler. “We have a very good shot of concluding these negotiations under the TPA deadline.”