Fourteen years of tortuous global trade talks will end in failure this week unless there is a sudden and unexpected end to the impasse between developed and developing countries that has bedevilled negotiations.
Hopes are low of a breakthrough at the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting that begins in Nairobi on Tuesday, with the US openly calling for time to be called on the Doha round of talks that began in the Qatari capital in November 2001.
Michael Froman, the US trade representative, has said the attempt to secure a comprehensive global deal was stuck. “Getting it unstuck begins with acknowledging that Doha was designed in a different era, for a different era, and much has changed since,” he wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times.
“It is time for the world to free itself from the strictures of Doha.”
There has been little or no progress in the Doha round since 2008, when developed and developing countries found themselves at odds over whether poor countries should be allowed to increase tariffs to support their farmers if food imports rose sharply.
The US believes that since the last trade round was concluded more than 20 years ago a group of developing countries – including China and India – have made such rapid progress that they should no longer be given the preferential treatment reserved for poor nations.
WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo has said one of the pivotal questions facing member nations when they gather in Nairobi is whether or not to carry on negotiating under the current system.
Despite a clear indication from the US and Europe that they want talks to start again from scratch and to include new issues, such as rules for investment, Azevedo appealed last week for one last push from trade ministers on the Doha round.
He admitted that there was currently no deal on offer in Nairobi but added” “We do still have the chance of delivering some significant elements in the extremely limited time available.
“So I would urge you to seize this last opportunity to show the flexibility and political will that we need.”
When launched in 2001, the Doha round was the most ambitious set of negotiations since the modern multilateral trading system was set up after the second world war. It included agriculture, manufacturing, services and trade rules, and the assumption was that rich western countries would open up their markets to agricultural goods in return for better access for their manufactured goods and service sector companies.
But slow progress in the early years of the talks stalled with the onset of the global recession in 2008. The collapse of the Doha round is likely to prompt the US and the EU to pursue bilateral trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
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