Doha Post-Mortem: The Outlook for Trade After the Collapse of the WTO Talks

(World Trade Interactive)

Since the most recent collapse of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round negotiations in late July, there has been much speculation about how the failure to secure a new trade liberalization agreement will affect the future of global commerce. Some say the talks effectively died years ago and that there are simply too many fundamental differences to overcome to achieve any type of meaningful agreement. The fallout, they say, could be a rise in anti-globalization sentiment that translates into not only greater economic protectionism but also a decline in international cooperation in general. Others counter that the talks merely faltered in Geneva over a technical issue, that a breakthrough agreement is in fact closer than ever, and that much like the Uruguay Round before it the Doha Round will pick up again in a year or two and come to a successful conclusion. The real news, they say, is how the rise of the advanced developing countries will affect trade policymaking in the years ahead.

Despite the hand-wringing over the outcome of the July 21-29 ministerial meeting, many participants said negotiators were close to a breakthrough on agriculture and non-agricultural market access that could have paved the way for a final agreement covering issues such as services, trade remedies and intellectual property rights as well. “We really made tremendous progress” during the meeting, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said as the ministerial ended. “We probably moved the ball further forward in the last 10 days than we have in the last eight years.” Virtually all involved have expressed an interest in preserving that progress somehow in hopes that formal negotiations will resume sooner rather than later. Click here for the complete article.