EU failed to negotiate an agreement ending EU discrimination in the telecommunications sector. Kantor hailed the U.S.-EU agreement reached in Marrakech on April 13 of this year under the GATT Government Procurement Code which will nearly double to $200 billion the bidding opportunities available to the U.S. and EU. However, Kantor expressed disappointment that the United States and EU could not have gone further and completed agreement on telecommunications.
Kantor also announced that the 1994 Title VII report to Congress will include information on procurement practices of Australia, Brazil and China, in addition to Japanese procurement practices in two other sectors -- supercomputers and computers.
Japan Supercomputer Review
Based on continuing concerns regarding Japan's implementation of the 1990 U.S.-Japan Supercomputer Agreement, Ambassador Kantor announced that USTR would continue the special review of Japanese actions under the Agreement launched on April 30, 1993. Kantor acknowledged that the Japanese purchase of six U.S. supercomputers of a total of 15 machines procured by the Japanese Government during the 1993 Japan Fiscal Year represented a positive development in the sector, but he noted that the year-long review process had highlighted several major areas of concern. Kantor stated that the best way to sustain progress in the supercomputer sector was to use the review mechanism to work closely with the Japanese Government to address these concerns and ensure the truly open, fair and non-discriminatory Japanese Government procurement regime for supercomputers sought by the Agreement.
Special 301
Kantor today identified 37 trading partners that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property or deny fair and equitable market access to United States persons that rely upon intellectual property protection.
Kantor said that there is consensus among those in the U.S. government and the intellectual property community that three of these trading partners, Argentina, China and India, pose the most significant problems in this area. The U.S. government currently is engaged in intense efforts to resolve these problems with these governments. At this juncture, Kantor considers U.S. interests to be best served by continuing these efforts over the next two months. If a solution to U.S. concerns has not been reached with these countries within 60 days, or by June 30, they will be named "priority foreign countries", and investigations of their practices will immediately be initiated under section 301 of the Trade Act.
Kantor also announced placement of six trading partners on the "priority watch list". Those are the European Union, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey. He further announced that nineteen other countries had been placed on the "watch list," and he decided that four of them -- Egypt, El Salvador, Greece and the United Arab Emirates -- would be subject to out-of-cycle reviews. The out-of-cycle reviews will determine whether
