Doha Is Dead

But do we really need multilateral institutions anymore to kick-start international trade?

BY LAWRENCE HERMAN, GARY CLYDE HUFBAUER | SEPTEMBER 26, 2011

This past weekend, the world's central bankers and finance ministers gathered in Washington with the grandees of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for their annual meetings. Their attention was, quite naturally, focused on the European debt crisis. Officially, the world's economic leaders remained committed to concluding a global trade accord, although only the leaders of the developing world reiterated that commitment over the weekend. But instead of embracing old commitments, they should all recognize that those trade talks (the so-called Doha round) are dead, the negotiating agenda is out of date, and international business has moved on. Efforts to expand trade on other tracks, however, are far from dead.

It would be difficult to repeat the string of multilateral trade successes that characterized the first 50 years after World War II. The achievements reflected a confluence of circumstances that no longer exist: U.S. economic and military dominance and unrivaled political leadership of the Western world, the weakness of the developing countries as a group, and, finally, the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. led-coalition and the Soviet bloc, which paradoxically produced stunning achievements in multilateral diplomacy.

In the field of trade diplomacy, this era reached its apogee in the 1990s with the conclusion of the Uruguay round in 1994 and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since then, the international economic consensus has progressively disintegrated, with the Doha round as a notable casualty. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is another victim. In both cases, entrenched national interests and the rise of new powers with protectionist tendencies (Brazil, China, India, and South Africa) prevented meaningful compromise. The question is: Where do we go from here?

The answer is to set aside grand global efforts and think small until conditions are more favorable. Trade negotiators should concentrate their efforts on two things: making progress on liberalizing trade through an expansion of smaller trade accords; and encouraging businesses, financial institutions, and other nonstate groups to reach their own trade-facilitating agreements.

JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT/AFP/Getty Images

 

Lawrence Herman is a partner in the law firm Cassels Brock in Toronto. Gary Clyde Hufbauer is Reginald Jones senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

URGELT

11:36 AM ET

September 27, 2011

Disagree.

The problem with our current crop of trade agreements is that they permit an unlevel playing field. We grant concessions to protectionist countries. They grant us promises of access that are never fulfilled. Fixing this should be our priority, not a new bunch of bilateral trade agreements which extend the status quo.

Where barriers to American imports and business activities persist, the goal of negotiations should be to eliminate those barriers or rip up the trade agreements and impose our own barriers. The one thing we can no longer tolerate is an unlevel playing field; it's killing our economy.

 

ROGERBT

12:24 PM ET

October 24, 2011

Since then, the international

Since then, the international economic consensus has progressively disintegrated, with the Doha round as a notable casualty best juicer
. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is another victim. In both cases, entrenched national interests and the rise of new powers with protectionist tendencies (Brazil, China, India, and South Africa) prevented meaningful compromise

 

ELI

7:17 PM ET

October 24, 2011

It would be difficult to

It would be difficult to repeat the string of multilateral trade successes that characterized the first 50 years after World War II. The achievements reflected a confluence of circumstances that no longer exist: U.S. economic and military dominance and unrivaled political leadership of the Western world, the weakness of the developing countries as a group, and, finally, the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. led-coalition and the Soviet bloc, which paradoxically produced stunning achievements in multilateral diplomacy. Search for executive jobs sydney.

 

YARINSIZ

4:08 PM ET

October 25, 2011

They grant us promises of

They grant us promises of access that are never fulfilled. Fixing this should be our priority, not a new bunch of bilateral trade agreements which extend the status quo. Where barriers to American imports and business activities persist, the goal of negotiations should be to seslichat eliminate those barriers or rip up the trade agreements and impose our own barriers.