India's Business Standard reports on something that most of us have known for months now - the WTO's Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations isn't getting completed in 2010:
'Indian trade negotiators are of the view that the failure to close gaps in trade talks, coupled with minimal participation from the US, has killed the prospects of meeting the 2010 deadline for closing the Doha round. Analysts and trade experts said the failure to meet the deadline would put a question mark on the relevance of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a global trade body....
According to trade analysts and think tanks, the 2010 deadline is not achievable mainly because the US has not been engaged and there is insufficient political will on trade issues. â??The main argument advanced by the US is that it needs real new effective market access for its exporters in order to win the support of the Congress for the trade deal and this could be delivered only by the sectoral agreements. Developing countries have resisted the proposal on the ground that the understanding from the outset has been that, as in the past, members would have the option to join sectoral agreements on a voluntary basis,â? said Anwarul Hoda of Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
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For readers of this blog and most other people paying attention to the Doha Round, the missed 2010 deadline is hardly news. The Business Standard article also rightly demonstrates how, without serious changes from the US and other WTO Members (but especially the US), Doha's long-term prospects are equally bleak (something that I've been saying for a while now).
On the other hand, one must really question whether, as the unnamed "analysts and trade experts" say, the collapse of the Doha Round would really mean the end of the WTO. In fact, there are several reasons to doubt this conventional wisdom.