Posts tagged…Doha
“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:…
Read more…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Sat, Aug 02 2008Joseph Francois argues the Doha Round was strangled by an outdated agenda and unworkable principles, including the MFN rule.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…
The end of the Doha Round
Sun, Jun 01 2008The Doha Round of WTO trade negotiations is entering its final agony. It may be time to start spreading the blame.
The draft agreements circulated in late May are lame (agriculture) or empty (services) or unable to bridge sharp disagreement (NAMA, rules). The enterprise was weakened by the disinterest of the Bush administration for most of the last seven years, and by the arrival of new management…
WTO’s explanation of the 08-02-08 Agriculture text
Tue, Feb 19 2008The compromise draft issued by the negotiating group chairman is more than a ‘text’: after 7 years, this is, for the first time, an attempt at coherent proposals couched in the language of an agreeement. This summary, prepared by journalists in the WTO’s Information Division, makes the text almost comprehensible.
The main purpose of this note is to walk you through the revised draft text…
WTO agriculture proposals probably fall short of substantial improvements
Sat, Feb 09 2008After six years of negotiation, the latest compromise from the Chair of the negotiating group is a complex package whose main strengths are that it includes ‘across the board’ cuts in bound rates of duty on agricultural imports and an effective elimination of export subsidies. Still, border barriers are so high that these cuts look unlikely to bring about the ‘substantial improvements in market…
What the collapse of the Doha talks means for agreement on climate
Tue, Jun 26 2007
The news that the WTO talks had collapsed again probably deserves the familiar gripes and even the bored yawns that greeted it. But behind this story is a worrying lesson about the potential for agreement on other global challenges, like climate change.
Ignoring the WTO jargon, the collapse of the talks is a story about how the world has changed in the past half century or so since the WTO rules…