Western Iowa Congressman Steve King has just returned from Mexico, where he observed the breakdown on international trade talks.King says the World Trade Organization is now far weaker than it was, and there is now some question as to whether it will survive as a viable entity. King was in Cancun, Mexico when negotiations collapsed on Sunday. He says the W-T-O presented the chief means for getting ag subsidies in other countries reduced, and barriers lowered that’re now preventing the shipment of U.S. grain and livestock abroad. The trade talks broke down when developing countries locked up against the U.S., the European Union and Japan. King says the developing nations were demanding the developed countries end domestic subsidies, but King says the developing nations were unwilling to offer anything in return. King says he heard the kind of rhetoric you hear in the United Nations. King — who calls the UN a “third world debating society” — says we’re going to have to deal with that attitude in the future. King says the Bush Administration needs to quickly negotiate more free trade agreements directly with individual nations that were part of the 21-nation voting coalition which blocked agreement this past weekend. He says that’s one way to try to break up the coalition. King says it’s one way to find out which countries are with us, and which are against us.
