Posts tagged…Doha
A better way ahead for WTO
Thu, Dec 18 2008"As we have argued before, governments need to look for other options such as smaller, more manageable standalone multilateral deals." extract from: FT Editorial - The broken promise of DohaA 'smaller, stand-alone' deal is almost certain to lead to a plurilateral agreement among a sub-set of WTO's 153 members because it will probably not offer sufficient gain to all of them. But that's OK in my…
Read more…A Pisgah sight of the Doha deal
Mon, Dec 08 2008(Update: the Ministerial meeting will not take place) Ahead of a likely attempt by WTO Minsiters to spy the promised land before the year is out In one last attempt to wrest consensus from growling discord, the (retiring) Chair of the WTO Agriculture Negotiations has released another version of his 120-page 'modalities' paper (.pdf, about 1mb) for the proposed Doha Round agreement on Agriculture.…
A better way to negotiate on agriculture
Thu, Dec 04 2008Next week, at the Institute for International Trade in Adelaide, Andrew Stoler (Institute Director, former Deputy Director-General of WTO) and I are presenting a conference in our project on future frameworks for WTO agriculture agreements.
In addition to our own research (some linked here) we've commissioned the help of leading agriculture and trade policy research centers in Brazil, China,…
The unravelling trade consensus
Tue, Aug 26 2008An much better account of the real, secular challenges facing the WTO than Larry Summers' jumbled column (see the Sidebar) can be found in Simon Evenett's dissection of the failure of the Doha Round, written almost a year ago. I think Simon has set the bar too high, but his call—presaging that of the Warwick Commission—for a period of reflection and a new start for the WTO is and intriguing…
“Sensitive” farm quotas revealed
Thu, Aug 14 2008Details are starting to emerge of the expansion in import tariff-quotas in the EU that might have conceded included in a Doha deal. They are large numbers by any measure, because the EU now comprises 27 middle and high-income economies.
The global tariff-quotas—open to all suppliers—would have been:
- Beef: 290,000 tonnes
- Sheepmeat: 42,000 tonnes
- Butter: 69,000 tonnes
- Cheese: 79,000 tonnes
- Sugar:…
Differences over the ‘revival’ of WTO negotiations
Thu, Aug 14 2008While Pascal Lamy, the WTO Director General, rushes around the world trying to revive an agreement he claims was 'almost done' and within Members' grasp, the Chairman of the Agriculture negotiating group Crawford Falconer—who has been through the mangle trying to squeeze consensus out of the Members over two years—has a more skeptical assessment of the chances of 'revival'.
"Overall, there was a…
Next steps for agriculture agreements
Wed, Aug 13 2008The WTO's Doha Round of trade negotiations did not 'collapse'; they failed. The failure was not caused by the disagreement over the Special Safeguard Mechanism. The poor quality of the proposed agreements reflected much deeper problems that might also have caused the collapse of consensus. The Doha enterprise had priorities that were no longer aligned with the commercial realities of world…
Doha defeated by contrary goals, rear-view mandate
Sat, Aug 02 2008Joseph Francois argues the Doha Round was strangled by an outdated agenda and unworkable principles, including the MFN rule. We're better-off burying our mistakes, he argues, and moving on.
"In a sense, developing countries are collectively asking that food prices go up and down at the same time. The inconsistency reflects divergent interests across the newer, non-OECD members of the WTO. It also…
Go back? Go forward? Take a powder and lie down?
Fri, Aug 01 2008Well…the third of these is not an option except, possibly, in Europe where dispirited WTO delegates can drift off to the beach for the summer holidays. Simon Evenett—to whose work I've recently refered—is not at the beach, it seems. He has prepared a very timely paper for VoxEU.org on the best way to manage the collapse of the Doha negotiations.
The collapse of the Doha Round negotiations
Wed, Jul 30 2008
There's no joy in having predicted this outcome.
As explained (at some length) in my earlier post, I don't believe that the draft agreement on the table represented anything like the 'substantial improvement' in global markets that was the goal of the Doha Declaration that launched the talks in 2001. There were too many status exceptions, category exceptions, and opportunities for manipulation.…
The G-Other
Mon, Jul 14 2008
I wonder if they're any better at meaningful collaboration than the G-8? No sign of it in this official snapshot taken in Sapporo, Japan, before their meeting with the G-8 in July, 2008.
More signs of Doha Round’s demise
Sat, Jun 21 2008Relentless determination (or mad optimism) from the Director-General notwithstanding, the vital signs of the WTO's Doha round continue to deteriorate while even erstwhile friends are starting to mutter—sensibly—about pulling the tubes before the patient becomes an embarrassing stink. Disaffected connections, of course, have no hesitation in pronouncing the final sentence:
BRUSSELS (Thomson…