Trade Barriers

Trade barriers imposed by the United States on foreign products cost Americans $19 billion a year by driving up the price of everything from winter coats and costume jewelry to candy bars and ceramic wall tile, according to a new government report. Officials at the U.S. International Trade Commission, hoping to give a boost to global free-trade talks, said Friday that they identified 44 sectors of the U.S. economy where costs were being increased by trade barriers.

The first day of talks between the United States and Japan to try to remove trade barriers and narrow trade imbalances failed to produce agreement in any key area, officials from both sides said today. A member of the U.S. delegation told a news conference the talks had been "friendly and cooperative" but none of the five main areas discussed had been resolved.

The governing body of the European Community today criticized the United States for keeping it on a list of trade partners considered trade offenders in the telecommunications sector. According to a statement by the EC Commission, the 12-nation group "made substantial progress" in tearing down telecom trade barriers in 1989 and "regretted" that it had not been stricken from the U.S. list of telecommunications trade offenders.

Trade negotiators convene in Geneva today in a last effort to breathe life into the four-year Uruguay Round of international trade liberalization talks that collapsed in Brussels last month. A five-week cooling-off period has brought little sign of progress, however, on the issue that brought the talks to the brink of failure: agricultural trade barriers.

Japan may react strongly if the U.S. government lists it among countries deemed to seriously violate free trade principles, a Foreign Ministry official said today. Under U.S. trade law, the Bush Administration must decide by May 30 which countries maintain high trade barriers to U.S. products. Japan topped a preliminary list, released last month by U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, of 34 countries deemed to have such barriers. "This is a matter that has already created quite a reaction in this country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Taizo Watanabe told a regular press briefing.