David Warren, FED
i.
(letter.
Mike Hall, LAD
only)
3 April 1991
2. PA £C/US
Mr
ex
Ms J Clarke
OT2
DTI
1-19 Victoria Street
LONDON
SW1
Dew Jan,
Cc:
British Embass 224 Washington
Stone 22/4
nu funnest PaiMFN hti
низ (para 5)
Mr H Jour's
Cummins
Mr Seaton of
M-
4- златой
in
Commercial Department
3100 Massachusetts Ave N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008-3600
Telephone: (202)
898 4367
Telex: RCA 211427 or 216760-WUI 64224
Facsimile: (202) 898-4224
мки
US: NATIONAL TRADE ESTIMATES
1.
PJ 19/4
USTR released the 1991 US National Trade Estimates on 29 March (Good Friday!). I attach a summary of the main points from the country-by-country entries. I am getting another printed copy of the NTES and will forward that to you as soon as possible. I am sending copies of relevant entries to other recipients of this letter.
-
2. There is no Super 301 this year, though there are 301-like deadlines coming up including Special 301 (announcements expected on 26 April) and government procurement (Title VII of the 1988 Act deadline 30 April). without the focus of Super 301, the main interest in this year's list is the pointers, if any, to Administration strategy for renewing fast-track. There have been suggestions in the press that sounding and acting tough on foreign trade barriers will help the Administration convince Congress that it can be trusted with renewed negotiating authority. That is certainly the way it usually works; but I don't see it that way on this occasion. For one thing, the focus of the fast-track debate is almost entirely on Mexico, a fact which has surprised almost everyone. So the only section of this year's NTES which is directly relevant to fast-track renewal is the Mexican entry. That entry is fairly detailed and is carefully framed as a list of US objectives in the negotiations. But it is certainly not Mexico-bashing: that would hardly fit with the Administration's justification for free trade with Mexico, to reward - and lock in place - recent trade liberalisation by the Mexican government.
3. As for other countries, CSTR have gone out of their way to play down the "name-calling" aspect of this year's NTE exercise. At the press conference, Josh Bolten, General Counsel at USTR, presented the report as an inventory of trade issues for the guidance of US trade negotiators rather than a sin-list. Actually USTR usually say that, but this year they seemed to me to say it with rather more conviction (I wonder if Japan's recent announcement that it will produce its own sin-list, and the wider coverage and greater detail of last year's EC list, have combined to put USTR a bit on the defensive?). Bolten pointed to a number of items in last year's entry for Japan which had been resolved
་་མཡ་ འས་་