Collapse of Doha – too many differences?

Yesterday in Geneva, the Doha Round of trade talks came to an abrupt halt and collapsed after being launched seven years ago. After what has been described to have been nine days of very tough and tense negotiations, an agreement was just not able to be reached.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) called these trade negotiations the ‘Doha’ Round back in 2001, because they were launched in Doha, Qatar. The main objective of these talks was to liberalise global trade in order to make importing and exporting simpler and less expensive, especially for developing countries. A lot of enthusiasm and hope was placed on these multilateral trade talks and the potential of globalization, with the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs seen as something that could benefit both rich and poor. But the breakdown down of talks yesterday was partly due to the inability of developed and developing countries to reach a compromise on opening up their domestic markets to more competition.

The negotiations have taken place between the 35 country members of the WTO, with meetings taking the place around the world, with what seems to be a recurring theme – the pushing back of deadlines. The original deadline was actually set for January 2005. The Doha trade talks have actually collapsed three times over the last seven years, so perhaps the failure of the latest talks in Geneva yesterday comes as no surprise.

Analysts are saying that this time round, negotiations broke down essentially because India, China and the US failed to agree over measures to protect poor farmers. Although there is some blaming that is occurring at the moment, with China pointing the finger at the US and the EU for unwilling to eliminate the large subsidies they pay their farmers, a lot of Ministers are very disappointed by the outcome, and are united in their willingness not to give up yet. For example, India’s envoy to the talks, Ujal Singh Bhatia, said “bottom line is we can’t give up.”

So what does this mean for multilateralism? In an interview with the BBC yesterday, Peter Mandelson, the EU trade Commissioner, dismissed the claim that some are now making that multilateralism is dead. What seems clear is that these difficult global economic conditions we are living under, with petrol and food prices soaring, are making it increasingly challenging for countries to agree on matters of trade. There is still a possibility that talks may resume at later date, but whether or not more time is what these negotiations need to succeed, seems unlikely.