Free Trade Damaged By Unilateral USA

10.59.22am GMT Tue 18th Nov 2003

Responding to Gordon Brown's plan to create a new US-EU dialogue to end trade barriers between them, Vince Cable MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, said: "Gordon Brown has been forced to address this issue because recent damaging and illegal unilateral action by the Bush administration has set back the cause of international free trade by years."

"A special trans-Atlantic trade arrangement, of the sort championed recently by Iain Duncan-Smith, and now by Gordon Brown, would appear to the rest of the world as an attempt to exclude them from negotiations on the future of free liberalisation."

"Global agreement under the auspices of the WTO is still the best way to ensure that trade barriers are brought down and the benefits of free trade are available to all countries."