U.S. agricultural trade leaders continue to push for increased market access and reduced agricultural subsidies leading into this week's World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Hong Kong.
"Hong Kong will not be a time for us to make some major breakthroughs that the United States had hoped for, but we do hope that we can make incremental progress and establish building blocks that would go toward even more progress early in the new year," says U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman.
Portman expects the meetings to be a successful meeting in terms of breaking the deadlock and coming up with the solution to be able to move Doha forward. Instead of a concluded round by 2005, negotiators now expect it to last until the end of 2006.
He hopes to see "incremental progress on the building blocks including agriculture, and then progress on least developed countries and a package where they can feel more comfortable about their ability to integrate into the global trading system and take advantage of what the ultimate result in Doha should be," he says.
Be sure to read Farm Futures Executive Editor Mike Wilson's live coverage from Hong Kong.
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