The White House is seeking to renew President George Bush’s fast track authority to negotiate the global trade talks. The White House has urged the congress to renew this special power of the president to negotiate a trade deal which is schedule to expire on 1 July. However, renewal of the authority is largely depends on Bush’s skills in working with the democratic-controlled Congress. The White House comments came soon after the meeting of top trade officials from around 30 countries to break the deadlock over Doha round talks in Davos. The recently concluded meeting seems to have rekindled the five-year old Doha round of global trade talks despite no major breakthrough have been made so far. George Bush needs Congress to approve in any case a short-term extension of fast track trade deal authority to conclude or make progress in Doha talks and other trade deal negotiations with Malaysia and South Korea, which is already moved into dark clouds of uncertainty. The White House in its statement has said, ‘We certainly think it is important that Congress renew it. We are in a very important part of (the Doha) negotiations. We have a small window to get a lot of things done’. However, making a breakthrough for global trade deal is increasingly becoming a tough task as France and Austria has criticized European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson for his suggestion to reduce the trade tariffs beyond the current proposal of 54 percent reduction. In the meanwhile, Germany lost no time to cone forward to defend Peter Mandelson on this issue. And these developments clearly signaled towards the fact that the EU may not be able to reduce tariffs any further to match Washington’s expectations. The U.S. Agriculture Department is busy preparing outlines to refurbish the present farm subsidy program which is due for renewal this year. The department is likely to present the outlines of proposal this week. Many countries are waiting for the proposal as they will use it as a parameter to measure how serious Washington is on the global trade talks. Moreover, it would interesting to see the political developments in Washington as the White House would try many routes to convince the Congress to grant an extension to fast track authority.