July 13, 1999

The Clinton Administration's push for an early harvest approach in the upcoming international trade negotiations may seem a bit puzzling since it seems to go against sound negotiating practices until you consider it's the President's last chance to get some bragging rights on trade before he leaves office.

Early harvest is the trading concept some developing countries tried in the Uruguay Round, without success, with their tropical products. The idea is to separate out one sector for negotiation to a conclusion without waiting for the other sectors to be concluded. In the Uruguay Round, developing countries tried it until other countries caught on to what was happening. Everyone lost interest.

If you start picking off certain sectors, for those who are giving, they're using up their chits; for those who are getting, once they get what they want, they lose interest, says Len Condon, American Meat Institute vice president of international trade and part of the negotiating team at the Uruguay Round as part of the U.S. trade representative's staff. The way global trading has worked, he adds, is to take the position that it's not a deal until everything is a deal.

With early harvest, you lose leverage in other negotiations, Condon says. The more things you have to trade off, the more chances you have for successful global negotiations. The better way to go for good negotiators is don't give anything away until you get to the end of the day and see what is out there to be traded around."

There is a suspicion among some in the trade community that the Clinton Administration wants to achieve something in trade before Clinton leaves office in early 2001. This administration won't be in office when the negotiations are concluded, and some are suspicious that they want to have something they can point to as an achievement in trade, says Condon. Agriculture, however, would not be involved.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Dean Kleckner reflects much the same reasoning. We will have lost before we begin with early harvest, Kleckner says. Without agriculture being part of the negotiations for all sectors, it will remove the incentives for other countries to remain at the negotiating table until the full package is settled. We will lose any leverage that we have.