The United States is willing to make tariff concessions in its agricultural sector at the next round of the Doha global trade negotiations, visiting deputy U.S. trade representative Peter Allgeier said on Wednesday.

"We are prepared to reduce significantly our agricultural subsidies and agricultural tariffs provided other countries who have even higher tariffs and give even more subsidies, such as the European Union (EU), do the same," said Allgeier, also the U.S. Representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva.

"Large trading countries have a responsibility to contribute significantly at the talks and to make further concessions," he said. "Agriculture is probably the most difficult aspect of the Doha negotiations."

Allgeier is on a four-day visit to China to seek consensus on pushing forward the Doha talks.

During the visit, Allgeier held discussions with Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Yi Xiaozhun and other agencies and officials.

"We talked about what we each are willing to do to open our own markets because other countries look to the major trading countries, such as the U.S. and China, to lead the way and to make contributions to the negotiations," Allgeier said.

The Doha Round of the WTO talks ground to a halt last July because developed nations wished to continue subsidizing their farmers, while developing nations disagreed.

China's Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai on Monday urged the United States and Europe to slash their domestic agriculture subsidies, saying the major obstacle to the Doha Round lay in the inaction of the United States and Europe to cut substantially their tariffs on farm produce imports and cut the huge subsidies for agriculture.

"The question is how much more is the EU prepared to do in comparison with the U.S.?" said Allgeier.

According to Allgeier, WTO members have already agreed to cut tariffs using a special kind of formula, namely the Swiss formula, in which countries with higher tariffs have to make a larger cut and those with lower tariffs have to make a smaller cut.

Both China and the United States have lower tariffs compared to the ones in other countries, typically in large developing countries such as India and Brazil.

"Therefore China and the U.S. share a common interest in reducing these tariffs," Allgeier said.

The Doha Round was launched in 2001, with the aim of alleviating poverty through fairer trade conditions. But the negotiations stalled in July 2006 due to sharp differences among major WTO members on agricultural trade and industrial market access.

"We are already negotiating very intensively and we hope to complete the Doha Round by the end of this year," Allgeier said.

Source: Xinhua