The Last Call for the Doha Round?
Will the Doha Round be concluded in 2011?
Stuart Harbinson:
Rolf J. Langhammer:
Roderick Abbott:
Peter Draper:
Patrick Messerlin:
Jeffrey J. Schott:
Guy de Jonquières:
Frank Lavin:
Claude Barfield:
Andrew Stoler:
Alan Oxley:
Give it a last chance!
Businesses need glogal rules in a global environment. The WTO is the right tool to deliver. Should the DDA collapse once more, the system might be in danger, with the emerging countries willing to take advantage.
But to succeed, I fully agree with Patrick Messerlin that we need much more on servics from the emerging countries.
And the services pillar is also the right tool for the emerging and developing countries to trigger further their own internal development by putting the right conditions to attract foreign direct investment in their domestic economy. The second “D” of the DDA lies in the services negotiations, but this has not yet sufficiently been realised by those most interested!
Let’s hope that progress will be seen in the very near future in Geneva,… or DDA should be officially decrlared “dead”!. Pascal
No, I cannot see the DDA being completed in 2011.
The clock is ticking in Geneva and political engagement at the highest level is just not there to get it done this year, above all in Washington. Meanwhile, the French presidency of the G-20 deflects the attention of President Sarkozy away from contentious farm and trade issues towards agenda items such as commodity price regulation (and the dampening of speculative forces on basic foodstuffs) and the reform of the international monetary system that strengthen his hand in an election year, all the more so in anticipation of a widely expected duel with the current IMF chief.
The Geneva talks continue to be mired in endless discussions on negotiating modalities that eat up precious time. The disconnect between the incantations of heads of state and the accomplished figure skating practiced by trade diplomats in Geneva is puzzling. By the end of the summer, once the ice has melted, Pascal Lamy should be prepared to break this logjam by “pulling a Dunkel” and taking his own iteration of a modalities text directly to heads of state. He may not elicit immediate consensus, but will establish a key marker along the path to a final deal.
Meanwhile, the job of ECIPE and others in the punditry business is to keep reminding policy-makers and their political masters of the costs of non-Doha in these uncertain and volatile times. All key stakeholders further need to be reminded of the fact that, absent agreed modalities, a market access bounty of unprecedented value is already on the table in NAMA and AG. It is one to which a credible but balanced set of services commitments now needs to be added. Doing so would provide the necessary, and until now missing, lubricant to a completed deal.
So many countries have practiced unilateral virtue in service sector reforms in recent years. This provides them with enormous scope for merely closing the gap between applied and bound regulatory access conditions in their GATS commitments, let alone engage in de novo market opening. Such locking-in need not raise any adjustment fears in developing and emerging economies, who have much to gain by “spending” such coinage in the DDA’s last stretch to secure or enhance a final package on goods trade.
Meanwhile, if we are to give meaning to the “D” that was inserted in the middle of the DDA, developed countries must be prepared to deliver a credible package of commitments on Modes 1 and 4 that embraces the IT revolution that took root after the curtain fell on the Uruguay Round and which has allowed a rapidly growing number of developing countries to realize significant export gains in services trade.
A final push to make in securing a meaningful DDA outcome will be to break down the artificial divide between goods and services – between the GATT and GATS – by producing negotiated outcomes, for instance on IT services (that complement the ITA) or on trade facilitation services (the cluster of transport, logistics and distribution) that reflect the integrated nature of doing business in today’s economy. Such re-packaging will take time and doubtless confront turf resistance within governments. Still, it affords a practical way of getting the private sector to devote renewed attention to – and lend more vocal support for – the many public goods the multilateral trading system delivers to its Members and to the world more broadly.
Pierre Sauvé
Deputy Managing Director and Director of Studies
World Trade Institute
University of Bern
The timeframe for reaching a deal in 2011 is challenging, but achievable.
I agree with those commentators who have detected a strong political willingness to conclude the Round in 2011. The political leaders of the WTO members clearly realise that the economic, development and systemic gains from Doha are simply too valuable to let go of.
Of course turning political commitment into actual negotiating concessions is never easy – particularly after several years of negotiations where so many trade-offs have already been explored. But the past few months have seen a real change of gear in Geneva, and an openness to explore further options for reaching a deal. The timeframe for reaching a deal in 2011 is challenging, but achievable in my view.
Most of the necessary elements for a final Doha deal are indeed already on the table. We have stabilised a very ambitious package of agricultural liberalisation and achieved an understanding of how industrial tariffs will be cut across the board with a formula approach. But this needs to be complemented with robust results in areas that have so far been left behind – emerging economies will have to contribute to this effort in a manner comparable to the benefits they have obtained out of the multilateral trading system. Participants to this debate have rightly called for further focus on Services, which have definitely been lagging behind too far and for too long. In addition, we need a strong outcome on sectoral liberalisation of industrial goods, also by tackling non-tariff barriers, and reinforced WTO rules in a number of important areas, like horizontal subsidies.
Many participants to this debate have pointed to the necessity of the United States and China finding some convergence of their positions. I could not agree more, and there are some encouraging signs of progress in this respect. However, the final balance necessary for striking a deal in a complex multilateral trade negotiation can only be found in a small plurilateral group of members, which is the best format for identifying trade-offs across different negotiating areas and markets. There is clearly still some hesitation to move into this kind of a negotiating process, but past experience shows us that this is the way to make real progress and to bridge the gaps between members’ positions.
Jean-Luc DEMARTY
Director-General
Directorate General for TRADE
European Commission
Dead since long
I wrote a few years ago in Textile Asia, Hong Kong that the DDA is like the dead parrot in the famous Monte Python sketch. The salesman, think Lamy, says “look it moves” or “it is just resting” but it is dead all the same since long. And too few bothers. There are no strong enough demandeurs, it could have been the farmers but they are not. (Compare with the textile exporters of Asia and Brazil during the Uruguay Round)
But really important i9s the fact that the “new” protectionists, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, India and to a latter extent Indonesia are absolutely not prepared to lower duties enough to make a commitment from USA and EU on agriculture big enough to make the round successful. They are happy to have GSP access to the western markets while China pays MFN duties and are anyway bothered by the enormous competition from China, a country that beats GSP every day. So they see how hard it is to compete with China in North America and in Europe and can not accept lowering of tariffs that would give China a big boost to compete in their home markets. That is unthinkable to them. And there is where the round got stuck 5-6-7 years ago. And since then nothing have changed and that is why people, that is bureaucrats and diplomats as other people already have done so, should free themselves from unrealistic thinking and put the DDA on permanent hold and go forward.
I suggest that US/Canada and maybe Mexico on one side and EU/EFTA on the other negotiate a plurilateral free trade agreement that any country which whish to trade freely with this group of countries should be allowed to sign on to. A free trade agreement over the Atlantic also seem to be the only type of free trade agreement that have any chance what so ever to go thru the US congress. But first Obama or his successor need a “fast track” mandate to negotiate, otherwise no country can negotiate with USA.
EU also urgently needs to follow suit of Norway and start negotiations on a free trade agreement with China.
When these two things have happened a new round might be an alternative to the spaghetti bowl.
Åke Weyler
Weyler Consulting & Information
Stockholm