Talks on new tech trade deal await better offer from China
Deal to slash duties on technology products hangs in balance, with negotiators hoping Beijing will soften its position and revise offer
International negotiations to cut tariffs on a range of information and communications technology products could be veering towards an impasse as China remains slow to offer flexibility in trade talks.
Teams of negotiators are meeting at the Permanent Mission of the European Union to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva until November 20 to expand the "core list" of products covered by the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), a tariff-cutting scheme established in 1996 when devices such as smartphones were not around.
China provided in talks last month a large "sensitivities list" of 140 products, which it wants to be excluded from the expanded ITA or have longer tariff phase-out periods. The ITA negotiations have about 250 products being considered for duty-free treatment.
The Chinese delegation had yet to deliver a revised offer by Thursday afternoon in Geneva, despite pledging to do so in an ambassador-level meeting on Monday, a report by World Trade Online said yesterday.
The United States, Japan and the European Union described China's offer as unacceptable to reaching a "commercially significant" deal, the report said.
John Neuffer, the senior vice-president for global policy at US-based advocacy group Information Technology Industry Council, wrote in his blog post from Geneva that Malaysia had earlier provided a revised offer that sought to exclude more products from the scope of an expanded ITA list.
"Turkey and a couple of Central American countries saw little or no improvement to their sensitivities lists, which include dozens and dozens of products they want removed," Neuffer said.
On Wednesday, US lawmakers expressed their concerns on whether the ITA talks could yield "a meaningful result" in a letter to US Trade Representative Michael Froman.
"Countries such as China must increase their ambition by, for example, significantly reducing the number of products they seek to exclude from coverage of the expanded ITA and committing shorter tariff phase-out periods for sensitive products included in the final deal," wrote the chairman and ranking members of the US House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee.
An expanded ITA could cut tariffs on an estimated additional US$800 billion in information and communication technology trade globally, a 20 per cent increase over the US$4 trillion now covered annually. That would boost global gross domestic product by US$190 billion.
"If the negotiating teams here can't hammer out a commercially significant outcome now, there is little or no chance of declaring this undertaking a victory for global trade at the WTO Ministerial," Neuffer said.
Negotiators at the ninth round of ITA talks this year had an eye to completing the deal at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Indonesia early next month.