Remarks by Robert B. Zoellick, U.S. Trade Representative
Well, I want to thank Mr. Tempelsman for that very kind and
thoughtful introduction. For those fellow Trade Ministers in the room, I thought when he was opening,
and he mentioned how trade affected so many interests across our societies, that we could
say, "Yes, and they have the phone number of every Trade Minister and they let us know about all
their interests too."
I want to thank CCA for organizing this very important private
sector component of this year’s AGOA Forum and for inviting me to be here with you. And I’m
especially pleased to be here with my friend, Minister Kituyi of Kenya.
I’m exceptionally pleased that I’ve been able to participate in
all three AGOA Forums held to date, including the one last year that was very ably hosted by our
friends from Mauritius. I have found these events to be extraordinarily useful in terms of taking
stock about we have accomplished, but also in trying to get a sense of what we should
be focusing on in the way forward.
And of course, the discussions and exploration of business
opportunities taking place at this private sector session are certainly as if not more important than
the government-to-government meetings that will take place. Because our efforts on the policy
side will ultimately only bear fruit if we are able to shape an environment in which you - the
businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and investors - can be successful in your work.
As I seek to learn more about sub-Saharan Africa in late 2003, I
reflect on the fact that roughly three-and-a-half years have past since the passage of AGOA. And I
have to say, I see many countries – more than ever before – that want to move beyond
aid-dependency to try to use trade to develop their economic growth and development and pattern of
opportunity. And as Mr. Tempelsman said, the question is how to integrate trade and aid
effectively.
The leaders of these countries – including such trailblazers such
as President Museveni of Uganda and President Mogae of Botswana, both of whom I had the
pleasure to meet recently here in Washington, understand that sub-Saharan Africa has fallen
behind much of the rest of the world economically over past decades and that to catch up, African
countries need to figure out how to participate more fully in the global economy.
Now many of these countries – and there is perhaps no better
recent example than Kenya under President Kibaki – have undertaken difficult economic and
political reforms designed to create an atmosphere in which private sector-led growth can flourish. And
this is the context in which the Bush Administration has approached U.S. trade policy toward
Africa.
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We certainly share the view that fuller integration of sub-Saharan
African countries into the
world economy is crucial for long-term economic growth and
development.
We believe that greater involvement of African countries in the
multilateral trading system is in
the America’s interests as well. Africans clearly have not shared
fully in the benefits of global
trade liberalization over the past few decades.
We have other interests at stake, too, in Africa’s economic
success, including countering poverty,
spreading free market values and good governance, assisting in the
development of the rule of
law, creating a sound economic base for democracy, and the opening
of relatively untapped
markets for American businesses.
It seems to me that there are four key challenges African
countries face as they seek to become
more competitive internationally: establishing rule of law and
property rights, a climate for
investment, developing of infrastructure, and the all-important
human capacity.
Now first, in recent years, African countries have taken great
strides to strengthen the rule of law
and to improve governance. As Mr. Tempelsman mentioned, the NEPAD
Action Plan
recognizes however, that much still needs to be done to try to
build effective governing
institutions free of corruption and supportive of open
markets.
As the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has described, property
rights are also a key factor
in economic growth because they provide the opportunity for
people, especially poor people,
poor farmers – to be able to keep and build on the rewards that
they create. And this is certainly
true in Africa as well.
Second, investment: Sub-Saharan Africa represents nearly
one-eighth of the world’s population.
Yet the region receives less than one percent of global foreign
direct investment. Nor are local
savings developed property to try to help Africa grow.
If African countries are to increase production and create jobs
for their people, they must make
local investment safer and attract greater foreign investment,
especially in areas where they can
add value to products, such as light manufacturing and
agricultural processing.
Many African countries are also challenged by aging or inadequate
infrastructure, particularly in
the transport, energy, and telecommunications sectors. High
transport costs, unreliable utilities,
poor communications systems, these become very serious barriers to
development and
investment in creating opportunity for businesses.
Now part of the answer here is to open up the trade in the
services industry, which both increases
efficiencies and promotes investment. The World Bank found that
economic growth in countries
with open financial services markets exceeded the growth of
economies with closed financial
services markets by a full percentage point. The figure increased
to 1.5 percent for countries that
also have open telecommunications markets.
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Now the fourth challenge is that of human and institutional
capacity. To participate effectively in
international trade and the multilateral trading system, African
countries need help in terms of
educating and training people to participate in new businesses and
to negotiate business deals and
take part in trade agreements. Also Africa needs stronger
institutions to help develop trade.
So here’s what we are trying to do to address these challenges:
First and foremost, there is
AGOA, what brings us all together here. AGOA provides eligible
African countries with the
most generous access to the U.S. market of any country or region
of the world other than those
with which the U.S. has free trade agreements. Under AGOA, almost
all products from eligible
African countries enter the U.S. duty-free, including apparel.
By any measure, AGOA has been an outstanding success. U.S. imports
under AGOA –
everything from automobiles to apparel to fresh-cut roses – have
risen substantially, bringing tens
of thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in
new investment to sub-Saharan
Africa. But in addition to investment and jobs, AGOA has also
provided important incentives for
African countries to improve their infrastructure, especially via
privatization. Since AGOA was
passed several countries have initiated, accelerated, or completed
the privatization of key
infrastructure sectors such as telecommunications.
And U.S. firms have benefitted from AGOA, mainly from the improved
trading and investment
opportunities that AGOA has fostered, but also through sales of
machinery and components for
African-produced AGOA goods. U.S. exports to sub-Saharan African
countries were up 9
percent in the first nine months of 2003.
Now a second element of our Africa policy is the negotiation of a
free trade agreement with the
five countries of SACU, the Southern African Customs Union. This
is our first free trade
agreement with sub-Saharan Africa, and it’s part of our larger
effort to reach out to trade partners
from all regions of the world, and to expand opportunities for
U.S. businesses while broadening
integration with the global economy.
The US-SACU FTA is to build on AGOA’s success while at the same
time moving from oneway
preferences to a two-way partnership. We hope that this FTA can
serve as an engine for
wider regional growth and as a model for future FTAs between the
United States and African
countries.
We also believe this free trade agreement, as in other FTAs, will
significantly boost investor
interest in the region, particularly in the manufacturing and in
the services industries. It could
also help to improve infrastructure, particularly if the SACU
countries take an ambitious
approach to the area of services liberalization. Both donors and
private sector investors look to
the openness of sectors such as telecom, transportation and power
generation when considering
investment in these infrastructure-related areas.
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Our FTA negotiations began earlier this year, and we aim to
complete them by the end of next
year. So this could become a very important model, to send a
signal to countries all throughout
Sub-Saharan Africa of what’s possible.
The third element of our Africa trade policy is engagement with
African countries in the WTO.
The successful conclusion of the Doha Development negotiations
would have a significant
positive impact on both investment and infrastructure in Africa –
but only if African countries
help to craft practical solutions to the differences that are
preventing progress on the Doha
Agenda.
We worked closely with all of you, with African countries to
launch the Doha Round and we
consulted very closely in the run-up to the Cancun Ministerial on
all major issues as part of the
WTO negotiations.
We also worked together to craft a solution to the very difficult
TRIPS and public health issue.
Thereby broadening African access to critical medicines for
HIV/AIDS and other diseases
throughout Africa and throughout the world. We backed up this
policy with $15 billion
presidential initiative on HIV/AIDS, trying to bring real
resources to this effort.
So frankly, we were a little disappointed by the rhetoric and
breakdown at the Cancun meeting,
as I know many of you were as well. Multilateral trade talks
through the WTO are the best
mechanism for African countries to achieve some of their most
important objectives, such as the
global reduction of trade-distorting agricultural subsidies or
increased market access.
Some of the greatest market access opportunities for African
countries are not in the developed
world but with other developing countries. Thanks to preferential
programs like AGOA, or the
Generalized System of Preferences, and similar programs operated
by other developed countries,
most African goods already enter the U.S. market duty-free, about
92, 93 percent. The real
opportunities for sub-Saharan African countries in the future lie
in some of the large market
developing countries such as Brazil and India, where tariffs
remain very, very high.
Given this dynamic, we were puzzled that African countries did not
urge mid-level developing
countries to open their agricultural markets, too. Many of these
mid-level developing countries
offer African countries the most to gain in terms of market
access, because their barriers are high,
their populations are large, and their growth prospects offer
opportunities to all.
And one of the items that I hope to talk about with my Trade
Minister colleagues over the course
of the next couple of days is to be aware that there has been a
recent development on the WTO
front that should be of particular interest to Africa and the
United States and some others.
There’s a case that was filed by India, and won, against the EU,
about the EU preference
program, because it violated the most-favored nation. I think this
is an extremely unfortunate
precedent, and we ought to think closely about what it could do to
AGOA. So, this is a classic
example of how some developed nations, the United States, the EU,
African countries have some
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common interests. Because if this precedent takes hold, it could
put AGOA at risk. And it’s not
us whose doing it, it’s a fellow developing country.
In view of the challenges that African countries face on the
infrastructure for trade, we were also
surprised that there was not more African support for WTO
negotiations on trade facilitation.
The goal of trade facilitation in negotiations is really just to
simplify and regularize customs
procedures internationally and help get goods to market more
quickly and less expensively. From
my visits to Sub-Saharan Africa, this would appear to be a
priority for many African countries,
certainly for the land-locked, but I have story after story from
many of you about the problems of
bringing goods in through the systems. And especially in an
environment where you will
competing with other developing countries around the world in
bringing goods to market
quicker.
Another of the so-called "Singapore issues" was transparency in
government procurement.
Which is also crucial to African interests because agreed
international disciplines in this areas
would help lower costs and, very important, fight corruption.
Again, this is not opening the
government procurement market, it’s simply transparency so that
you know what the rules are.
A topic that received a lot of attention in and after Cancun is
cotton. And we certainly know that
this is a sensitive issue for many African countries. But there is
also a lot of misinformation
going around about this issue. So let me make sure our position
clear: we have been and remain
willing to deal with cotton in the context of the WTO’s
agricultural negotiations. We have stated
clearly our interest in eliminating export subsidies worldwide for
all agricultural commodities,
obviously including cotton, reducing trade-distorting domestic
support substantially, and scaling
back tariffs on farm products across the board.
We even committed to cut domestic cotton subsidies as part of an
overall package that would
also have reduced European and Chinese subsidies (the Chinese, I
think are now the second
largest, they’re not too far behind us) along with all
agricultural subsidies. What we cannot do is
to separate out cotton or any other commodity for handling outside
of the agricultural
negotiations or to discuss domestic support without also
addressing tariffs.
A reduction in cotton tariffs - which run at 100 percent or higher
in major consuming countries
like India or Pakistan - would help to increase demand, which in
turn would help to boost the
prospects cotton producers, including in West Africa. There are
many farm goods that suffer
from trade-distorting domestic policies. We want to address all of
these policies in all sectors,
including cotton, in the context of a global agreement on
agricultural trade reform.
We worked closely with African countries to launch the Doha Round
and we want to continue to
work with all of you to put these negotiations back on track. We
continue to believe that we share
many common interests in those negotiations and we are open to
your practical ideas. Because
we believe that African countries and other WTO members have very
important ideas about how
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to move these negotiations forward, so we hope to have some
further discussion on that this
week as well.
A fourth element of our policy is trade capacity building. We know
that market access alone is
not enough for many African countries, especially those with
little history or experience in
producing value-added goods. So we sought to try make available
the tools and training these
countries need to maximize their opportunities under AGOA and to
participate more fully in the
multilateral trading system. In the last three years, the United
States has invested some $345
million in trade capacity building programs for sub-Saharan
Africa, including $133 million this
year, a 26 percent increase over the prior fiscal year.
Now the technical assistance has gone toward such programs as
helping African businesses and
farmers to identify market niches, to address quality and
standards issues, to gain access to more
timely market information, and to help establish linkages with
prospective American business
partners.
Trade capacity building is a crucial element of our approach to
AGOA, the SACU FTA, and our
engagement with African countries in the WTO. In the case of AGOA,
my office, the Trade
Representative’s office has worked with several other U.S.
agencies to try to help African
governments and businesspeople to access trade benefits under
AGOA. We have held national
and regional seminars on AGOA throughout the continent. Last year
USAID established three
regional trade competitiveness hubs in sub-Saharan Africa to
provide expertise on the full range
of trade issues - from AGOA issues to sanitary and phytosanitary
topics to WTO topics. And that
is an idea that came out of one of our AGOA forums.
In the SACU negotiations, we have established a special trade
capacity building cooperative
group that will help identify and respond to technical assistance
needs in the course of the
negotiations, in the future implementation of the free trade
agreement, and in the further
transition to free trade. And in the WTO, we have provided funding
for trade capacity building
for African Members both through the WTO’s Global Trust Fund and
via Africa-specific
programs funded by USAID.
Now the private sector also has a very important role to play in
the area of trade capacity
building. We have included private sector and NGO representatives
in our trade capacity
programs for AGOA and recently published a Federal Register notice
soliciting private sector
input and participation in trade capacity programs as part of our
SACU FTA.
We are also trying to explore a novel application in that FTA, in
ways in which the SACU
countries and the United States can use the process of this free
trade agreement to try to promote
greater public/private sector cooperation, and greater use of
industry "best practices" in dealing
with HIV/AIDS testing and treatment of employees.
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Just to give you one example, when I was in South Africa, I
announced a program that was
supported by OPIC, our Overseas Private Investment Corporation,
that was trying to help deal
with housing financing in South Africa. It had a very important
concept. In many parts of the
world, people are afraid to be tested for HIV/AIDS because they’re
afraid that it will hurt their
credit rating. This program turned that concept on its head. To be
able to get the credit, to buy a
small home you had to be tested, and then you had, if you were
found positive, to be given
treatment. So it took the testing and the treatment and linked it
to a benefit in terms of being able
to own your own home.
As we look to the future of U.S.-Africa trade and economic
cooperation, we will continue to try
to examine ways in which we can support your efforts to strengthen
the rule of law and property
rights, increase investment, improve infrastructure and to address
capacity constraints.
In the near-term, our trade cooperation with African countries in
the WTO will be important.
Because the Doha Development Agenda represents a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to free up
world trade, while at the same time addressing some of the special
needs of the developing
world.
If African countries want to transform their economies, attract
investment, modernize their
infrastructure and become full players in the global economy, all
of you will need to consider
your interests in a successful outcome at the Doha Round.
Over the medium- to long-term, we certainly remain open to
considering new prospective FTA
partners in sub-Saharan Africa. We are particularly interested in
exploring ways in which, as with
SACU, an FTA can help to strengthen regional integration on the
continent.
AGOA will continue to be at the center of our approach. We
recognize that there is a lot we can
do to try to improve on AGOA and its implementation and have been
working with Congress, the
private sector, NGOs, and our African trade partners on some
elements for a possible AGOA 3
legislation.
As many of you are undoubtedly aware, there were some AGOA 3 bills
introduced in Congress a
few weeks ago. And over the next couple of months, I’m going to be
personally consulting
closely with Chairman Thomas of the Ways and Means Committee,
Chairman Grassley of the
Finance Committee, as well as with the sponsors of these AGOA 3
bills, and with Members and
staff of the key Committees as they consider and move them
forward.
Our vision for AGOA 3 is to amend the Act in a way that would give
greater confidence to
investors as well as producers and buyers of African products. Now
of course, one way to do this
is to fulfill President Bush’s commitment at the last AGOA forum,
to work with Congress to
seek the extension of AGOA beyond its 2008 termination.
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Another way, I know its very important to many of you, is to find
an appropriate means to
address as soon as possible the expiration next year of AGOA’s
third-country fabric provision.
We certainly recognize that African textile producers are not yet
in a position to supply the needs
of the AGOA apparel industry in Africa, but at the same time we
want to try to provide
incentives for investment in African textile production. Because,
in the long-term, and in view of
coming changes in the world textile and apparel trade, African
producers will have to consider
ways in which they can become more competitive. And from my
discussions with people in the
industry, the key way to do that is with vertical integration of
the industry from cotton to textile
to apparel.
I think it will also be important – in AGOA 3 or by other means –
to help African countries to
address supply-side constraints in developing export industries.
AGOA opened the U.S. market
to African goods but many African countries simply do not have the
capacity yet to produce the
manufactured or processed goods for the U.S. market. We need to
find ways to help get such
industries jump-started, especially in least developed
countries.
Finally, I hope that AGOA 3 can strengthen our ability to deliver
technical assistance to countries
and individuals who are eager to make the most of AGOA’s trade
benefits.
Africa faces many challenges. We certainly know these challenges
are not easy. And I want to let
all of you know how much we respect your efforts in the public and
the private sector, to make
progress. It will certainly take time, it will take energy, and it
will take resources to address these
challenges and to help people realize the trade, economic, and
human potential. But I have to say,
that I have been extraordinarily impressed by the advances that
African governments and
businesses have been able to make in recent years.
As I’ve said in other occasions, I last dealt with African
countries in the State Department in the
late 80's. I have seen a new generation of leaders, ministers,
officials, and business people. And I
am pleased that AGOA has played some part in moving in that
direction.
As we move forward to improve on AGOA and to forge stronger trade
and investment ties, we
will do our part to help African countries build their economies
and share more fully in the
benefits of open markets and free trade. Because we want to expand
opportunities for African
peoples and give them greater hope in a prosperous and secure
future.
We will also continue to work with U.S. investors and industry who
have been such strong
partners for us on AGOA, really been the heart of making this
effort move, from the legislation
to it’s implementation. And to ensure that AGOA and our larger
trade policy toward Africa
addresses their interests and helps to boost trade in both
directions.
Now over the next few days, and I think this is the most important
part of AGOA, we will have a
chance to learn from our visitors and guests from Africa. So I
want to thank you for taking the
time to come, for participating, for helping, and for sharing your
perspectives.
And the most natural way is to have my colleague Minister Kituyi
who I know is also going to
speak today.
Thank you.
