Trade Talks Moving Slowly for WTO

The latest round of negotiations over opening up global economies so there can be more market access for both developing and developed nations still look to be going nowhere fast. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Doha round of world market access negotiations now looks like it will not be concluded by the end of 2010 unless both developing and developed nations make “significant compromises.”

As Eliane Engeler is reporting in the Boston Globe online, the trade talks began in 2003 in Cancun, Mexico. That was the first ministerial. A subsequent ministerial round took place in 2005 in Hong Kong. “Those meetings were more noteworthy for their protests than for negotiating successes.”

Not much progress has been achieved in later negotiations either. This prompted WTO chief Pascal Lamy to comment that the WTO needs ‘“serious acceleration . . . We need to see real negotiations emerge, Lamy told a meeting of the WTO’s 153 members.”

Engeler reports that Lamy believes if the 2010 deadline is to be met then countries must reduce protectionism and other trade barriers in areas of agriculture, manufacturing and services. The Doha round is supposed to improve the world economy by allowing developing nations more market access for their products in the richest countries in the world. At the same time, developed nations would get the opportunity to enter emerging markets and sell goods and services. The targeted emerging markets are in Asia and Latin America.

The next ministerial is set for Geneva in November. Lamy and other WTO officials would prefer the participating nations to focus more on the “‘big picture”’ and leave more “delicate” individual issues like agriculture off the table initially. We shall see in November what comes from the latest talks and what this means for agriculture and food policy and law in both developing and developed nations.

To read the Engeler story in the Boston Globe online click here.

Posted: 10/20/09