EUobserver.com

The EU's trade chief has hit out at the more protectionist positions on trade that have increasingly been deployed by the Democratic presidential candidates in the United States.

Britain's Financial Times is reporting that trade commissioner Peter Mandelson in an interview with the BBC on Thursday (8 May) attacked rhetoric coming from US candidates on the imposition of new tariffs and criticising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

"It is irresponsible to be pretending to people you can erect new protection, new tariff barriers around your economy in this 21st century global age and still succeed in sustaining peoples' living standards and jobs," he is reported as saying. "It is a mirage and they know it."

The two remaining presidential candidates scrapping it out for the nomination of the Democratic Party, senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have stepped leftwards in their rhetoric on trade in comparison to the strongly pro-free-trade agenda of the last Democratic administration under Ms Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, who signed NAFTA.

Senator Clinton has said she wants to see a renegotiation of NAFTA, and that if that is not possible, then the US would be forced to withdraw from the trade agreement, rhetoric that has been matched by her opponent.

The two politicians also support the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods in retaliation for what they view as the undervaluation of the Chinese renminbi.

However, both candidates have surrounded themselves with advisors close to Wall Street and who are veterans of the Clinton administration. Analysts reckon much of the rhetoric on trade is just that, and that if elected, either candidate would hew closely to the liberalising trade agenda that has characterised administrations of both stripes since Jimmy Carter.

Indeed, a minor scandal erupted from within the Obama campaign in March, when it emerged that one of the senator's senior economic advisors had secretly reassured Canadian officials that Obama's attacks on NAFTA "should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

But Mr Mandelson believes even the rhetoric itself is dangerous.

"It is very irresponsible in my view to pretend to people that we can disengage from international trade, we can create barriers around our economy and then be surprised when people retaliate by doing the same," he said. "It is going to lead us into a vicious spiral of beggar-thy-neighbour policies which will take us decades back in terms of trade growth."

EU-US trade, worth some €1.89 trillion, represents around 37 percent of world trade, but the EU regularly engages in trade spats, with the European Commission regularly complaining about regulatory barriers for EU exports to the US.

The latest development that is expected to spiral into a sharp dispute at the WTO is a complaint from the European Biodiesel Board, which, as its market is steadily squeezed with governments beginning to back away from their previously robust support for biofuels, says that US subsidies are "creating a severe injury" to their European counterparts.

Additionally, towards the end of April, the commission published a report on US trade barriers that complained of the use of national security as a fig leaf for what are in reality trade protectionist measures.

Shipping container security screening "and related additional US customs routines are causing significant additional costs and delays to shipments of EU machinery and electrical equipment to the US," read the report.

The EU hopes to finalise a deal on world trade ahead of the US presidential elections, lest negotiations have to start all over again from scratch under a new president.

On Tuesday, Mr Mandelson told reporters in Brussels he believes a breakthrough in trade talks can be achieved in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, EU-US trade concerns are likely to be raised at the upcoming meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) on 13 May, a government-to-government mechanism set up in 2007 with the aim of avoiding trade-related disputes and advancing economic integration between the two sides.

Commissioner attacks protectionist 'mirage' of Obama, Clinton