As U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations, we support developing countries' call for the withdrawal of "Annex C" on services of the Draft Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration so as to end the extreme and unfair pressure the United States is placing on developing countries in the services negotiations.

The pressure from the United States amounts to bullying of countries that have repeatedly stated their intent to have flexibility in deciding whether to join General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations in particular sectors. It also would fundamentally change the "bottom-up" nature of GATS negotiations, which allows countries to choose not even to negotiate in a sector or in plurilateral contexts.

Moreover, plurilateral negotiations that allow pressure to be placed on a number of developing countries at once should not be included in any way in the Hong Kong Declaration. Developing countries must have the explicit option of deciding whether even to join negotiations, particularly in sectors with important development impacts, such as financial services, retail distribution, water services, transport, waste transport, healthcare, and education.

The United States itself has already witnessed the harmful impacts of services liberalization in sectors such as energy services when deregulation has taken place. Further, we have seen the impact of the GATS agreement when even the United States was unable to defend a regulatory scheme that the WTO determined violated GATS rules in the US-Gambling case. That decision demonstrated that GATS reaches deeply into domestic regulatory matters. Developing countries will be all the more vulnerable to impacts on their ability to regulate and to appropriately develop their services sectors.

ACTIONAID INTERNATIONAL USA
AFL-CIO
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH * U.S.
GLOBAL EXCHANGE
INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURE AND TRADE POLICY
OXFAM AMERICA
PUBLIC CITIZEN
SIERRA CLUB