Backgrounders
World Trade Organization
Doha Development Agenda(DDA)
Wikipedia on "WTO"
Infoserve at Hong Kong
About WTO Dossier
The Infoserve WTO Dossier aims to provide a comprehensive global view of the failed WTO Trade talks. This newsblog is currently being published from Germany.
NGO Statements
"Need for root-and-branch reform of the WTO"- ActionAid
"EU must change its mindset at WTO"- Oxfam
"The WTO trade model has no future"- Public Citizen
"The best outcome for world’s poor"- Focus on the Global South
"An opportunity to inject fresh thinking"- IATP
Intellectual Property Rights
Globalization
About Me
I am presently based at Munich, Germany. My past assignments include consulting for Sarai,New Delhi; MSF-Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, Paris; and assignments with South Centre,Geneva; Gene Campaign, New Delhi, and, Confederation of Indian Industry(CII), New Delhi. I have degrees in Intellectual Property Rights (NISCAIR, India) and Life Sciences(Calicut University, India).
Lamy: "What now, Trade Ministers?"
An open letter from World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy to the trade ministers who have contributed to the collapse of the Doha development round.
Dear trade minister,
The trauma generated by the collapse of global trade talks may not yet register on the streets of New York, Paris or Tokyo. But for cotton growers in West Africa, rice farmers in Thailand and beef producers in Latin America the reverberations are already being felt.
Should the breakdown on Sunday transform into a failure to resume the talks, there would be no winners. All of us would pay. We would pay through lost opportunities to expand trade, increase economic growth and boost development efforts in poor countries. We would pay too, through a weakening of the multilateral trade system in favor of far less effective bilateral trade deals. Moreover, the breakdown in negotiations would be cause for great celebration within the protectionist ranks.
Yes, we would all pay for this failure, but it is the poorest and weakest among you who would pay the most. The Doha round was launched nearly five years ago as a means of better integrating poor countries into the global economy. Trade can be a powerful tool for development and has been instrumental in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in countries like China, India, South Korea and Malaysia.
Many other countries would like to follow this example and derive the benefits of export-led economic growth. But current rules tilt against them because in those areas of production where they are most competitive trade is restricted by a variety of import barriers.
This is particularly true in agriculture. The sudden collapse of the talks has been a shock to many, but the fact that agriculture has been its root cause has surprised no one. No deal was possible without substantially reducing tariffs - which severely curtail farm trade - and those subsidies, which hurt farmers in poor countries by encouraging their rich-country counterparts to dump surpluses on global markets.
The debate that has clogged the arteries of this negotiation for some time centers on the proportion of those respective cuts. Those who favored deep cuts in subsidies were less ambitious on opening their markets, while those seeking far greater market opening were not prepared to pay the price of further farm- subsidy cuts. And in the meantime little attention has been paid to tariffs on industrial goods or services which represent over 90 percent of world trade!
As a result, the Doha development round is in dire straits and negotiations have been stopped. We have called time-out so that all of you can cool off and reflect.
The most obvious consequence of this is that we will certainly not conclude the round this year as we had agreed to in Hong Kong last December. We do not have time to complete our work in agriculture and industrial goods and many other important sectors of the negotiations, including services, fishing subsidies, antidumping and the environment, have been held in abeyance as members awaited an outcome in agriculture.
The pity in all of this is that what is on the table now constitutes greater progress in rolling back farm subsidies and tariffs than anything seen before in global negotiations.
Even the least ambitious proposals would have cut trade distorting farm subsidies by two to three times the previous round of talks. Export subsidies would have been eliminated. For the first time members would have limited fishery subsidies, which contribute to the depletion of our oceans.
The vast majority of exports from the very poorest countries would have faced no barriers to trade, and practices that had crippled African cotton farmers would have been substantially reformed.
Powerful tariff-cutting formulas that were on the verge of agreement would have opened global markets as never before. And the services negotiations held the promise of new business opportunities in sectors like express delivery, banking, insurance, computer services and communications.
Can this considerable foundation be retained?
This depends very much on you, minister. There are clear signs that the failure this week has already given rise to two phenomena that threaten the multilateral system: a shift in priorities to bilateral or regional agreements that all concede fall far short of a global deal both in the depth and scope of their coverage, and a surge in threats to achieve through our highly effective dispute settlement system what could not be achieved through the negotiations.
Bilateral agreements offer neither the geographic coverage nor the broad range of negotiations needed to address damaging trade distortions. Poor and small countries will be overlooked and agricultural subsidies will never be adequately addressed in such forums. We all agree that agriculture has been the biggest obstacle to an agreement here.
To those who favor regional or bilateral agreements I ask the following question: What is the difference between a bilateral and a multilateral farmer?
Many of you, frustrated by the lack of progress, may also turn increasingly to the WTO dispute settlement system, which you have every right to do. But there is a danger that in shifting priority away from negotiations and to litigation we could damage the fragile balance that exists between interpreting existing rules and creating new and more relevant WTO agreements.
Our efforts aimed at creating a more equitable and relevant trading system have been dealt a severe blow and the future that we face is uncertain. All countries, particularly the largest and most influential, must now make every effort not to make a bad situation even worse.
As you ponder the way forward, I would ask you to consider the broader consequences of your inability to strike a deal. I would ask you not to take from the table those offers they have made and to cease the vitriolic attacks that render a return to the negotiating table more difficult.
Finally, I ask you to look at the big picture, beyond a narrow defensive one, and consider those living in poverty who saw in these negotiations a hope for a better life.
At this time of serious political turmoil, the WTO has the possibility to contribute to making this world fairer and more stable. Please think about that during this time-out.
Pascal Lamy is director general of the World Trade Organization.
An open letter from World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy to the trade ministers who have contributed to the collapse of the Doha development round.
Dear trade minister,
The trauma generated by the collapse of global trade talks may not yet register on the streets of New York, Paris or Tokyo. But for cotton growers in West Africa, rice farmers in Thailand and beef producers in Latin America the reverberations are already being felt.
Should the breakdown on Sunday transform into a failure to resume the talks, there would be no winners. All of us would pay. We would pay through lost opportunities to expand trade, increase economic growth and boost development efforts in poor countries. We would pay too, through a weakening of the multilateral trade system in favor of far less effective bilateral trade deals. Moreover, the breakdown in negotiations would be cause for great celebration within the protectionist ranks.
Yes, we would all pay for this failure, but it is the poorest and weakest among you who would pay the most. The Doha round was launched nearly five years ago as a means of better integrating poor countries into the global economy. Trade can be a powerful tool for development and has been instrumental in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in countries like China, India, South Korea and Malaysia.
Many other countries would like to follow this example and derive the benefits of export-led economic growth. But current rules tilt against them because in those areas of production where they are most competitive trade is restricted by a variety of import barriers.
This is particularly true in agriculture. The sudden collapse of the talks has been a shock to many, but the fact that agriculture has been its root cause has surprised no one. No deal was possible without substantially reducing tariffs - which severely curtail farm trade - and those subsidies, which hurt farmers in poor countries by encouraging their rich-country counterparts to dump surpluses on global markets.
The debate that has clogged the arteries of this negotiation for some time centers on the proportion of those respective cuts. Those who favored deep cuts in subsidies were less ambitious on opening their markets, while those seeking far greater market opening were not prepared to pay the price of further farm- subsidy cuts. And in the meantime little attention has been paid to tariffs on industrial goods or services which represent over 90 percent of world trade!
As a result, the Doha development round is in dire straits and negotiations have been stopped. We have called time-out so that all of you can cool off and reflect.
The most obvious consequence of this is that we will certainly not conclude the round this year as we had agreed to in Hong Kong last December. We do not have time to complete our work in agriculture and industrial goods and many other important sectors of the negotiations, including services, fishing subsidies, antidumping and the environment, have been held in abeyance as members awaited an outcome in agriculture.
The pity in all of this is that what is on the table now constitutes greater progress in rolling back farm subsidies and tariffs than anything seen before in global negotiations.
Even the least ambitious proposals would have cut trade distorting farm subsidies by two to three times the previous round of talks. Export subsidies would have been eliminated. For the first time members would have limited fishery subsidies, which contribute to the depletion of our oceans.
The vast majority of exports from the very poorest countries would have faced no barriers to trade, and practices that had crippled African cotton farmers would have been substantially reformed.
Powerful tariff-cutting formulas that were on the verge of agreement would have opened global markets as never before. And the services negotiations held the promise of new business opportunities in sectors like express delivery, banking, insurance, computer services and communications.
Can this considerable foundation be retained?
This depends very much on you, minister. There are clear signs that the failure this week has already given rise to two phenomena that threaten the multilateral system: a shift in priorities to bilateral or regional agreements that all concede fall far short of a global deal both in the depth and scope of their coverage, and a surge in threats to achieve through our highly effective dispute settlement system what could not be achieved through the negotiations.
Bilateral agreements offer neither the geographic coverage nor the broad range of negotiations needed to address damaging trade distortions. Poor and small countries will be overlooked and agricultural subsidies will never be adequately addressed in such forums. We all agree that agriculture has been the biggest obstacle to an agreement here.
To those who favor regional or bilateral agreements I ask the following question: What is the difference between a bilateral and a multilateral farmer?
Many of you, frustrated by the lack of progress, may also turn increasingly to the WTO dispute settlement system, which you have every right to do. But there is a danger that in shifting priority away from negotiations and to litigation we could damage the fragile balance that exists between interpreting existing rules and creating new and more relevant WTO agreements.
Our efforts aimed at creating a more equitable and relevant trading system have been dealt a severe blow and the future that we face is uncertain. All countries, particularly the largest and most influential, must now make every effort not to make a bad situation even worse.
As you ponder the way forward, I would ask you to consider the broader consequences of your inability to strike a deal. I would ask you not to take from the table those offers they have made and to cease the vitriolic attacks that render a return to the negotiating table more difficult.
Finally, I ask you to look at the big picture, beyond a narrow defensive one, and consider those living in poverty who saw in these negotiations a hope for a better life.
At this time of serious political turmoil, the WTO has the possibility to contribute to making this world fairer and more stable. Please think about that during this time-out.
Pascal Lamy is director general of the World Trade Organization.
Government Statements
1. United States
1a. Susan Schwab, United States
2. European Union
3. India
4. Australia
Official Documents
EU:The US and a Doha deal-Factsheet
EU:Doha Developmental Agenda(DDA)-Chronology
US:DDA Factsheet-July 24, 2006
Archives
Biodiversity
Millenium Development Goals
Trade Policy
HIV/AIDS
Masthead
Site FeedInfoserve