MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

WTO says Doha round faces collapse unless agreement is reached before 2012

Former World Trade Organisation Director-General Peter Sutherland

Doha round of negotiations on world trade faces collapse unless world leaders can reach a final agreement to lift trade tariffs before the end of the year, a new report by the governments of the UK, Germany, Turkey and Indonesia warned this week.

The report by the Trade Experts Group, which reports on protectionism and promotes global trade, warned the Doha round would die unless political leaders were able to demonstrate their commitment to a final agreement in coming months.

The report argued the failure of the Doha round would not only impact on trade, but also economic confidence, and more widely, stability and global governance.

Peter Sutherland and Professor Jagdish Bhagwati who co-chaired the Experts Group, called specifically on the US and China to help progress the deadlocked negotiations and argued the concessions that need to be made were “relatively small in size and involve limited political pain”.

“The message of this report is that the Doha Round of talks is facing imminent failure. Ten years of negotiations has brought a wide ranging package of trade agreements within reach, but without urgent action the prize a conclusion would bring will be lost for all nations” Sutherland added.

The report came as former US Trade representative Susan Schwab said the Doha round was doomed to failure and urged world leaders to come up with a more realistic new round of negotiations.

In a speech in the US to the Peterson Institute for International Economics Swab said: “There is not going to be a big happy conclusion and therefore we need to move on. You can’t un-break the egg.”

The warnings also followed a meeting of trade ministers from the 21 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum last week in the US. After the meeting, ministers refused to pronounce the Doha round dead but noted there were “unbridgeable” gaps in several key areas.

APEC also said a deal before the end of the year was unlikely unless there was a major breakthrough calling on WTO members to develop a “clear and realistic path” to bring the negotiation to a successful conclusion.

The Doha round aims to eradicate protectionism in a number of key areas particularly agricultural trade tariffs and subsidies, industrial tariffs and intellectual property regulation.

The last round of negotiations collapsed in 2008 over agricultural import rules with developed nations including those in the European Union, the US and Japan falling out with emerging economies over farming subsidies and agricultural commodity import tariffs.