But to get the backing of business, a Doha agreement must be more ambitious than what is currently on the table, said Christopher Wenk, senior director for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
"2011 is going to be a big year for trade in the U.S.," Wenk told reporters, saying the year would see action on free-trade deals between the United States and South Korea, Colombia and Panama, as well as a strong push on the Doha negotiations as part of President Barack Obama's exports initiative.
The comments are the latest in a series of hints that the Doha negotiations -- launched in 2001 to help poor countries prosper through trade -- are not as deadlocked as they appear.
The G20 summit last month quietly dropped a call to complete the Doha round in 2010, recognising the lack of progress in the talks.
But World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy said in a newspaper interview on Friday that trading powers were readying for the end-game in the Doha talks.
And progress is possible in talks in the highly technical but crucial area of non-tariff barriers, the diplomat leading those negotiations said on Thursday.
American businesses say that what is currently on the table will not generate enough new trade opportunities to justify their support. In particular, they want big emerging economies like China, India and Brazil to sign up to proposals to slash tariffs in key industrial sectors to zero, or close to it.
INDUSTRY AGENDA
Wenk was speaking after executives from Fedex, United Parcel Service, AT&T, Qualcomm, Philip Morris International and Caterpillar spent the week meeting counterparts and EU officials in Brussels and Lamy and trade negotiators from other countries in Geneva.
"The train is beginning to move. 2011 is doable. We need to get ahead of the issues and make sure our priorities are on the agenda," said William Lane, Washington director of Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment.
Caterpillar makes machinery vital to emerging and other developing countries as they undertake big infrastructure projects and is a keen supporter of a Doha deal.
"We can get this done in 2011. Companies that fail to recognise that are making a colossal mistake," he said.
Lane acknowledged that the United States had taken a "time-out" on trade for the past 18 months, but said that was now clearly changing, and business was worried that the U.S. was being left behind as the EU signed a series of free-trade agreements and Asian countries liberalised their markets.
Caterpillar is particularly keen on extending existing zero-tariff deals covering industrial sectors from the United States, EU, Japan and Canada to the big emerging economies.
It also wants a deal on re-manufactured goods -- a focus of the non-tariff barrier talks, involving used products that are stripped down and reconditioned to be as good as new while saving on resources and energy, and reforms to anti-dumping measures to stop them being abused for protectionism.
The business lobbyists had a cool reception in Geneva from China's WTO ambassador, Sun Zhenyu, who urged them to take what was on the table now rather than waiting five years in the hope of a better deal, Wenk said.
But he said Washington was ready for concessions too.
"I know the U.S. has said to these countries: 'Work with us here... We're willing to talk about your interests too. It's not going to be a one-way negotiation, it's going to be a two-way negotiation,'" he said."
One concession sought by the emerging economies is highly politically sensitive: a big increase in the number of temporary work visas for their workers. (Reuters)
