Washsington: India must agree in world trade talks to open its market to substantially more foreign goods or US business won't support the pact, a US business group told Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath on Thursday.
"We're really looking for the advanced developing countries to play a very constructive role in bringing this round to a major conclusion," vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, Mary Irace, told Nath during a discussion on the troubled Doha Round of world trade talks.
Nath is in Washington for talks with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab ahead of a key meeting of trade ministers next week in Geneva.
Countries must soon agree on formulas for cutting farm subsidies and agricultural and manufactured goods tariffs or risk seeing the round fail.
Irace said the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents major US corporations, has already begun lobbying in Congress for one of India's top priorities in the talks - increased access for its computer software and other professionals to work in the US on short-term contracts.
That is controversial with many members of Congress, who view it as an immigration rather than trade issue.
US lawmakers would have to approve any world trade deal for it to go into effect in the United States.
"For us to move on issues that are highly sensitive here, we really do need a big package at the end of the day from the U.S. business point of view," Irace said, complaining that India's stance on manufacturing tariffs in the world trade talks would not lead to any new US business there.
Nath, who went from the discussion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to a meeting with Schwab, said India was willing to do its part, but WTO members have already agreed that developing countries would not have to cut their tariffs as much as developed countries.
The US is pushing an approach that would cut high tariffs more aggressively than low tariffs and reduce maximum tariffs to around 15 per cent.
Nath said that plan would require poor countries to make deeper tariff cuts than rich countries, rather than the other way around.
The so-called Swiss 15 formula "means I have to reduce 75 per cent and the US has to reduce 15 per cent," Nath said.
India also cannot accept tariff cuts that threaten the livelihood of its 650 million subsistence farmers by exposing them to subsidised foreign competition, he said.
"Unless the subsistence issues are respected, there can be no deal for agriculture. I'm not willing to negotiate subsistence. I am willing to negotiate commerce," Nath said.
India and other developing countries should not have to reduce their tariffs to "pay" the US and the EU to stop subsidizing farm goods, Nath said.
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