Operational decisions are made by the General Council, which consists of a representative from each member country. The General Council meets monthly, and the chair rotates annually among national representatives.
It continues to be among the countries urging further discussions on opening markets to trade. Although decisions in the WTO are made by consensus, the United States has a highly influential role shaping decisions in the institution befitting its status as the largest trading nation in the world. Periodically, member countries agree to hold negotiations to revise existing rules or establish new ones.
These periodic negotiations are commonly called "rounds. The multilateral negotiations are especially important to developing countries, which might otherwise be left out of more selective agreements. It must be remembered, however, that trade liberalization also results in job losses and other economic dislocations as well. At that meeting, they agreed to undertake a new round of multilateral trade negotiations.
Before the Doha Ministerial, negotiations had already been underway on trade in agriculture and trade in services. These ongoing negotiations had been required under the last round of multilateral trade negotiations the Uruguay Round, However, some countries, including the United States, wanted to expand the agriculture and services talks to allow trade-offs and thus achieve greater trade liberalization.
There were additional reasons for the negotiations. Just months before the Doha Ministerial, the United States had been attacked by terrorists on September 11, Some government officials called for greater political cohesion and saw the trade negotiations as a means toward that end.
Some officials thought that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations could help a world economy weakened by recession and terrorism-related uncertainty. According to the WTO, the year showed "the lowest growth in output in more than two decades," and world trade actually contracted that year.
In addition, countries increasingly have been seeking bilateral or regional trade agreements. As of January 15, , regional trade agreements have been notified to the WTO, of which are currently in force. Some experts say that regional agreements are easier to negotiate, allow a greater degree of liberalization, and thus are effective in opening markets.
Others, however, argue that the regional agreements violate the general nondiscrimination principle of the WTO which allows some exceptions , deny benefits to many poor countries that are often not party to the arrangements, and distract resources away from the WTO negotiations. With the backdrop of a sagging world economy, terrorist action, and a growing number of regional trade arrangements, trade ministers met in Doha.
At that meeting, they adopted three documents that provided guidance for future actions. The Ministerial Declaration includes a preamble and a work program for the new round and for other future action.
This Declaration folded the ongoing negotiations in agriculture and services into a broader agenda. That agenda includes industrial tariffs, topics of interest to developing countries, changes to WTO rules, and other provisions.
Especially worth noting is how the role of developing countries changed at the Doha Ministerial. Since the beginning of the GATT, the major decision-makers were almost exclusively developed countries. At the preceding Ministerial Conference Seattle, , developing countries became more forceful in demanding that their interests be addressed.
Some developing countries insisted that they would not support another round of multilateral negotiations unless they realized some concessions up-front and the agenda included their interests. Because of the greater influence of developing countries in setting the plan of action at Doha, the new round became known as the Doha Development Agenda. At the Doha meeting, trade ministers agreed that the 5 th Ministerial, to be held in , would "take stock of progress, provide any necessary political guidance, and take decisions as necessary," and that negotiations would be concluded not later than January 1, With the exception of actions on the Dispute Settlement Understanding, trade ministers agreed that the outcome of the negotiations would be a single undertaking, which means that nothing is finally agreed until everything is agreed.
Thus, countries agreed they would reach a single, comprehensive agreement containing a balance of concessions at the end of the negotiations. Negotiations have proceeded at a slow pace and have been characterized by lack of progress on significant issues and persistent disagreement on nearly every aspect of the agenda.
A few issues have been resolved, notably in agriculture. However, the first order of business for the round, the negotiation of modalities, or the methods and formulas by which negotiations are conducted, still remains elusive 10 years after the beginning of the round. The Cancun Ministerial collapsed for several reasons. First, differences over the Singapore issues 9 seemed irresolvable. The EU had retreated on some of its demands, but several developing countries refused any consideration of these issues at all.
Second, it was questioned whether some countries had come to Cancun with a serious intention to negotiate. In the view of some observers, a few countries showed no flexibility in their positions and only repeated their demands rather than talk about trade-offs. Third, the wide difference between developing and developed countries across virtually all topics was a major obstacle. The U. Fourth, there was some criticism of procedure. Some claimed the agenda was too complicated. Also, the Cancun Ministerial chairman, Mexico's Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, was faulted for ending the meeting when he did, instead of trying to move the talks into areas where some progress could have been made.
At the end of their meeting in Cancun, trade ministers issued a declaration instructing their officials to continue working on outstanding issues. They asked the General Council chair, working with the Director-General, to convene a meeting of the General Council at senior official level no later than December 15, , "to take the action necessary at that stage to enable us to move towards a successful and timely conclusion of the negotiations. The Cancun Ministerial did result in the creation of the so-called Derbez text.
Ministerial chairman Derbez invited trade ministers to act as facilitators in Cancun and help with negotiations in five groups: agriculture, non-agricultural market access, development issues, Singapore issues, and other issues. The facilitators consulted with trade ministers and produced draft texts from their group consultations. The Ministerial chairman compiled the texts into a draft Ministerial Declaration 11 and circulated the revised draft among participants for comment.
The Derbez text was widely criticized at Cancun and it was not adopted, but in the months following that meeting, members looked increasingly at this text as a possible negotiating framework.
On agriculture, the Derbez text drew largely on both the U. It included a larger cut from domestic support programs than the U. On the Singapore issues, it included a decision to start new negotiations on government procurement and trade facilitation, but not investment or competition.
The aftermath of Cancun was one of standstill and stocktaking. Negotiations were suspended for the remainder of However, in early , then-U. He also said that the Singapore issues could progress by negotiating on trade facilitation, considering further action on government procurement, and possibly dropping investment and competition. This intervention was credited at the time with reviving interest in the negotiations, and negotiations resumed in March On July 31, , WTO members approved a Framework Agreement that includes major developments in the most contentious and crucial issue—agriculture.
With a broad agreement on agriculture and on other issues, negotiators were given a clearer direction for future discussions. However, the talks settled back into a driftless stalemate, where few but the most technical issues were resolved. The stalemate in increased the perceived importance of the 6 th Ministerial in Hong Kong as potentially the last opportunity to settle key negotiating issues that could produce an agreement by , the then- de facto deadline resulting from the looming expiration of U.
Although a flurry of negotiations took place in the fall of , WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy announced in November that a comprehensive agreement on modalities would not be forthcoming in Hong Kong, and that the talks would "take stock" of the negotiations and would try to reach agreements in negotiating sectors where convergence was reported.
The final Ministerial Declaration of December 18, , reflected areas of agreement in agriculture, industrial tariffs, and duty-free and tariff-free access for least developed countries see sectoral negotiations section below for details.
Generally, these convergences reflected a step beyond the July Framework Agreement, but fell short of full negotiating modalities.
New deadlines were established at Hong Kong for concluding negotiations by the end of These deadlines included an April 30, , date to establish modalities for the agriculture and NAMA negotiations. Further deadlines set for July 31, , included the submission of tariff schedules for agriculture and NAMA, the submission of revised services offers, the submission of a consolidated texts on rules and trade facilitation, and for recommendations to implement the "aid for trade" language in the Hong Kong declaration.
Trade negotiators likewise failed to reach agreement at a high-level meeting in Geneva on June July 1, It was agreed at those meetings, however, that Director-General Pascal Lamy would undertake a more proactive role as a catalyst "to conduct intensive and wide-ranging consultations" to achieve agricultural and industrial modalities.
This suggestion was roundly criticized by all sides and was not adopted at the Geneva meetings. Petersburg, the leaders pledged a "concerted effort" to reach an agreement on negotiating modalities for agriculture and industrial market access with a month of the July 16 summit. Despite the hortatory language of the G-8 Ministerial Declaration, the talks were indefinitely suspended less than a week later by Director-General Lamy on July 24, The impasse was reached after a negotiating session of the G-6 group of countries United States, EU, Japan, Australia, Brazil, and India on July 23 failed to break a deadlock on agricultural tariffs and subsidies.
The EU blamed the United States for not improving on its offer of domestic support, while the United States responded that no new offers on market access were put forward by the EU or the Group of 20 to make an improved offer possible.
Members of Congress praised the hard-line position taken by U. Following the July suspension, several WTO country groups such as the Group of 20 and the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters met to lay the groundwork to restart the negotiations. While these meeting did not yield any breakthrough, Lamy announced the talks were back in "full negotiating mode" on January 31, Key players in the talks, such as the G-4 United States, European Union, Brazil, India , conducted bilateral or group meetings to break the impasse in the first months of the year.
In April , G-6 negotiators G-4 plus Australia and Japan agreed to work towards concluding the round by the end of Yet, a G-4 summit in Potsdam, Germany, collapsed in acrimony on June 21, , over competing demands for higher cuts in developed country agricultural subsidies made by developing countries and developed country demands for greater cuts in industrial tariffs in developing countries. Despite the Potsdam setback, the chairs of the agriculture and industrial market access NAMA negotiating groups put forth draft modalities texts on July 17, The texts represented what the chair of each committee, as facilitators of the talks, believed was the basis for a balanced level of concessions based on the Doha Declaration and subsequent agreements.
Revisions to these texts were circulated on February, May, and July based on committee level negotiations held in Geneva. Despite the criticism these texts received from nearly all quarters, they have served to continue the engagement of the various parties in Geneva at a time when many have predicted the demise of the round.
Negotiators met in Geneva between July , in what was described as a 'make-or-break' summit to reach agreement based on the texts prepared during the spring.
Once again, however, trade ministers failed to reach agreement with the talks foundering on a "special safeguard mechanism" SSM for agriculture products see section on agriculture below. In the aftermath of the talks, there was a palpable sense of disappointment as many sticking points reportedly had been resolved. Director-General Lamy claimed after the talks broke up that convergence had been reached on 18 of 20 issues. Summing up this effort, Brazilian President Lula da Silva reportedly said, "We swam an entire ocean only to drown as we were reaching the beach.
In response to the global financial crisis, a summit of G heads of state of leading economic powers meeting on November , , in Washington, DC, agreed to work to reach an agreement by year's end on modalities leading to an "ambitious outcome" to the Doha Round and to refrain from raising new barriers to trade and investment.
New draft negotiating texts were issued in December in anticipation of a proposed ministerial to finalize modalities, yet that summit never materialized as differences between the parties remained intractable. Some states called for negotiations based on the December draft texts, however, the United States has maintained that these texts were not agreed to by the United States and do not reflect consensus on the way forward.
Instead, the United States has pursued a series of bilateral talks with advanced developing countries aimed at determining what specific market access commitments those countries could deliver under the draft texts.
Despite continued exhortations by G leaders to reach agreement on the Round, no breakthrough was achieved in The Marrakesh Agreements establishing the WTO called for a Ministerial Conference to be held every two years, although it had been nearly four years since the last Ministerial at Hong Kong in December While previous Ministerials had negotiations on the Round as their centerpiece, this Ministerial sought to avoid detailed negotiations and was designed to address other concerns facing the WTO system.
Yet, ministers "reaffirmed the need to conclude the Round in and for a stock-taking exercise to take place in the first quarter of []. However, the production of revised texts did not result in any breakthroughs. Director-General Lamy himself described the NAMA differences as "unbridgeable today," noting a "fundamental gap in expectations in sectorals.
Ambassador to the WTO also noted that serious market access differences continued in agriculture and services as well. Indeed, there may be a sense that time is running out. She advocated the "salvage" of several smaller agreements from the negotiation, including trade facilitation, the agricultural export pillar, reducing fishing subsidies and ending tariff and non-tariff barriers to green technologies.
In fact, Geneva negotiators had already begun thinking of a "plan B," focusing on a set of deliverables that could be agreed to by the WTO's eighth Ministerial, scheduled for December An LDC "early harvest" proposal for least developed countries LDCs which would have included such items as a deal on trade facilitation, duty-free-quota-free market access for LDCs, rules-of-origin proposals, movement on the cotton issue and a waiver to favor services for LDCs.
A "political guidance" document issued by the General Council prior to the Ministerial noted that "significantly different perspectives" remain over certain aspects of the single undertaking, making it "unlikely that all the elements of the Doha Development Round could be concluded simultaneously in the near future.
If negotiators are not able to achieve a breakthrough, there may be several consequences for multilateral trade liberalization. First, the negotiation of bilateral and regional free trade agreements may accelerate.
Some trade analysts view the increasing web of these agreements with suspicion. They assert that the emphasis on regional and bilateral negotiations undermines the WTO and increases the risk of trade diversion. Trade diversion occurs when the existence of lower tariffs under a trade agreement cause trade to be diverted away from a more efficient producer outside the trading bloc to a producer inside the bloc.
What also results from the plethora of negotiated FTAs, according to one economist, "a 'spaghetti bowl' of multiple tariffs depending on the source of a product and, in turn, a flood of rules of origin to determine which source is to be assigned to that product.
A second consequence may be the increased use of the WTO's dispute settlement function. If a political solution to disagreements among members cannot be agreed through negotiations, some practices like agricultural subsidies may be challenged in dispute settlement.
An increased reliance on dispute settlement may, in turn, put stress on the WTO as an institution if the decisions rendered are not implemented or are not perceived as being fairly decided. A third consequence of a prolonged impasse may be the withdrawal of offers already on the table or of agreements already made at the negotiations.
Such development-oriented proposals such as aid-for-trade, duty-free and quota-free access for least developed countries, or trade facilitation may languish due to the stalemate in the negotiations.
The EU commitment to phase out export subsidies by is contingent on a broader agreement and may not be implemented without one. Further, the global economic crisis may encourage governments to implement protectionist measures that may be entirely WTO-consistent—such as a country raising its applied rate tariffs to the bound rate—yet undermines the purpose of the negotiations to liberalize trade.
In addition, some have questioned the continued relevancy of the Doha negotiations in light of other pressing issues implicating the trade regime such as the global financial crisis, trade implications of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies, perceived exchange-rate manipulation, and widely volatile commodity prices: none of which are being addressed in the current negotiations.
As two noted economists wrote, "the Doha process has been Nero-like in dwelling on issues of relatively minor consequence while the burning issues of the day are not even on the agenda. Possible consideration of TPA legislation by the th Congress may provide a venue for a debate on the status of the Round and the prospects for reaching an agreement consistent with principles set forth by Congress in granting TPA.
Trade economists argue that the reduction of trade barriers allows a more efficient exchange of products among countries and encourages economic growth. Multilateral negotiations offer the greatest potential benefits by obliging countries throughout the world to reduce barriers to trade. The gains to the United States and to the world from multilateral trade agreements have been calculated in the billions of dollars.
Multilateral negotiations are especially important to developing countries that might otherwise be left out of a regional or bilateral trade agreement.
Developing country blocs can improve trade and economic growth among its members, but the larger share of benefits is from the trade agreements that open the markets of the world.
Multilateral trade negotiations are also an exercise in international cooperation and encourage economic interdependence, which offers political benefits as well. When a country opens its markets, however, increased imports might cause economic dislocations at the local or regional level.
Communities might lose factories. Workers might lose their jobs. For those who experience such losses, multilateral trade agreements do not improve their economic well-being. Also, if a country takes an action that is not in compliance with an agreement to which it is a party, it might face some form of WTO-sanctioned retaliation.
Further, some oppose WTO rules that restrict how a country is permitted to respond to imports of an overseas product that employs an undesirable production method, for example a process that might use limited resources or impose unfair working conditions. Thus, while multilateral trade agreements have been found to offer broad economic benefits, they are opposed for a variety of reasons as well.
The negotiations are being held in five working groups and in other, existing bodies in the WTO. Selected topics under negotiation are discussed below in five groups: market access, development issues, WTO rules, trade facilitation, and other issues.
The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture called for continued negotiations toward "the long-term objective of substantial progressive reductions in support and protection. Agriculture has become the linchpin in the Doha Development Agenda. The Doha Ministerial Declaration included language on all of these three pillars of agricultural support. Though it seems that the main reason behind the failure of the Doha Rounds are systemic problems, linked to rule and regulations of the global financial bodies; but the process of discussion has been politicised gradually among the two mainstream blocs- developed and developing countries.
Further, there seems to be a lack of coherent strategy among the developing countries to form a credible union which would help put more pressure on the Western or developed powers to bring transparency and make amendments in the rules in the WTO, IMF and the World Bank.
Skip to main content. You are here Home » Ask an Expert. Shijith Kumar asked: After a decade of negotiations, why the Doha Round has not succeeded? By the end, countries were taking part. It covered almost all trade, from toothbrushes to pleasure boats, from banking to telecommunications, from the genes of wild rice to AIDS treatments. It was quite simply the largest trade negotiation ever, and most probably the largest negotiation of any kind in history.
At times it seemed doomed to fail. And yet, despite its troubled progress, the Uruguay Round did see some early results. They had also revised the rules for settling disputes, with some measures implemented on the spot. Although the ministers intended to launch a major new negotiation, the conference stalled on agriculture and was widely regarded as a failure.
In fact, the work programme that the ministers agreed formed the basis for what was to become the Uruguay Round negotiating agenda. Nevertheless, it took four more years of exploring, clarifying issues and painstaking consensus-building, before ministers agreed to launch the new round.
They did so in September , in Punta del Este, Uruguay. They eventually accepted a negotiating agenda that covered virtually every outstanding trade policy issue.
The talks were going to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles. All the original GATT articles were up for review. It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed, and the ministers gave themselves four years to complete it.
The purpose was to clarify the agenda for the remaining two years, but the talks ended in a deadlock that was not resolved until officials met more quietly in Geneva the following April. Despite the difficulty, during the Montreal meeting, ministers did agree a package of early results.
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