The chief US trade negotiator said on Friday it was premature to renew trade legislation that would give countries more time to reach a new world trade deal after the talks collapsed last month.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, in a taped interview that will air on Sunday on the public affairs network C-Span, also said United States was not backing away from its demand in the talks for deep farm tariff cuts, even though there has been strong resistance to that.
"It's too early to be talking about an extension of trade promotion authority and that's for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is I don't want to take the heat off getting Doha done," Schwab said, referring to the world trade talks, formally called the Doha Development Agenda.
Trade promotion authority, which allows the White House to negotiate trade deals that cannot be changed by Congress, expires in mid-2007. It has long been considered essential for WTO talks to occur. A big battle is expected for renewal, with Democrats who hope to capture Congress in November likely to insist on terms the White House could strongly oppose.
The nearly five-year-old round of world talks was suspended last month after countries again failed to agree on how deeply to cut agricultural and manufacturing tariffs. Heading into the meeting in Geneva, the United States faced pressure to offer deeper cuts in its farm subsidies, but refused when it said others failed to offer meaningful new market openings.
While the United States still wants "a big deal ... there are others - other countries that want a much smaller deal, or that don't want to open their markets. And so right now what we have going on are conversations to see if it's even possible to find convergence," Schwab said on C-Span's "The Newsmakers."
Schwab, who is travelling to Southeast Asia next week and then to China, said she had a number of trips planned over the next three months "designed to see if convergence is possible. It may not be possible, but it doesn't happen, it won't be because the United States did not try everything humanly possible to get it done."