A major war of words and numbers took centrestage today over the cuts in industrial tariffs demanded by rich nations from countries like India and Brazil.Both India and Brazil had yesterday slammed the rich countries for demanding tariff cuts of more than 70 per cent, when they would cut their tariffs only by 25 per cent.In a strongly-worded release, the EU said that India and Brazil are trying to mislead the world on tariff cuts. ‘‘Don’t be fooled: the real cuts requested by the EU in industrial tariffs are 16% for Brazil and 29% for India. The average cut in applied NAMA tariffs in developed countries on the basis of the EU proposal would be more than 50%.”At a G-20 briefing this evening, Nath said, ‘‘I saw this press release and I thought it would be some good news but it’s only a statement of confusion. I think the EU wants to rewrite the Doha Declaration and the Framework Agreement. We all know that bound rates is the basis of WTO negotiations. I don’t see how the EU’s trying to twist it to make it applied rates.’’Explaining the anomaly in the EU missive, Nath said “(This is) just as in domestic support to agriculture, cutting money you don’t spend, doesn’t amount to reduction of support.”Brazil’s Foreign Minister Censo Amorim was scathing too, suggesting that “Maybe the EU should outsource some of their calculations to Indian computers. But once the EU uses this kind of language, it seems it wants to terrorise us into liberalizing unilaterally. It’s a kind of fuzzy logic.”
