LE BOURGET, France, June 24 (AFP): French President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday called on the United States and China to open their markets to outside competition.
"Do you want us to open our markets, well, we will open them the minute you open yours," asked Sarkozy in a speech at the Paris Air Show. "We will dismantle our tariff barriers the minute you lower yours."
Talks in Potsdam between the World Trade Organisation's "G4" the European Union, the United States, Brazil and India-on getting multilateral trade talks back on track broke down Thursday.
The stalled Doha round of trade talks remain mired in an impasse over agricultural subsidies and trade tariffs among many issues.
"We cannot continue to impose social, environmental, fiscal and monetary dumping," Sarkozy said.
"We have to lead an industrial policy with the same freedom of interpretation which our American, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian friends do," he said.
"Naivete is finished, it's time for reciprocity to begin," he warned.
The French president said he was in favour of a "real European industrial policy which would neither oppose nor be subordinate to competitions policy, but founded on the principle of a common European interest," he said, citing "energy supply, big research programmes and the defence industry" as examples.
Sarkozy calls on US, China, to open markets
FE Team | Published: June 25, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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