Steps, Doha Round

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis
Edited by Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett
A VoxEU.org eBook

A VoxEU.org eBook
Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Centre for Economic Policy Research 3rd Floor 77 Bastwick Street London EC1V 3PZ UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7183 8801 Fax; +44 (0)20 7183 8820 Email: cepr@cepr.org Web: www.cepr.org Centre for Economic Policy Research 2011 ISBN (eBook): 978-1-907142-37-6

A VoxEU.org eBook
Edited by Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett
Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

The Centre for Economic Policy Research is a network of over 700 Research Fellows and Affiliates, based primarily in European Universities. The Centre coordinates the research activities of its Fellows and Affiliates and communicates the results to the public and private sectors. CEPR is an entrepreneur, developing research initiatives with the producers, consumers and sponsors of research. Established in 1983, CEPR is a European economics research organization with uniquely wide-ranging scope and activities. The Centre is pluralist and non-partisan, bringing economic research to bear on the analysis of medium- and long-run policy questions. CEPR research may include views on policy, but the Executive Committee of the Centre does not give prior review to its publications, and the Centre takes no institutional policy positions. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and not those of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. CEPR is a registered charity (No. 287287) and a company limited by guarantee and registered in England (No. 1727026). Chair of the Board President Chief Executive Officer S Research Director Policy Director Guillermo de la Dehesa Richard Portes tephen Yeo Mathias Dewatripont Richard Baldwin
Contents
Foreword The Doha dilemma: An introduction to the issues and possible solutions Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett There is no Plan B only Plan A: Towards completing Doha Mari Pangestu Acknowledge Dohas demise and move on to save the WTO Susan Schwab Next Steps: Getting past the Doha Round crisis Ujal Singh Bhatia Next Steps: Is an early harvest still possible? Zhenyu Sun Getting past the Doha Round crisis: Moving forward in the WTO John Weekes The good ship Doha: Salvage-and-abandon-ship or repair-and-wait? Stuart Harbinson Keeping the WTO on track: A Doha down payment plus more Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett vii 9
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Foreword
Doha is deadlocked the members of the WTO are unable to give up and unable to go forward. In this eBook the contributors propose several dmarche that consider various combinations of 4 initiatives that offer a way out of the current impasse: Deliver a down payment Ditch the current process of negotiating in silos it doesnt work Develop a new and forward-looking agenda for the WTO Demonstrate some leadership: The down payment is straightforward. All the contributors suggest a number of area where agreement is already close, and which could be wrapped up in time for the December Ministerial. After a decade of negotiations, it hardly seems right to call this an early harvest, but a set of measures that focus on the needs of the least developed nations seems right for a Development Round. The current approach to negotiations is clearly not working and offers no way forward. Why not try new approaches? A number of contributors suggest abandoning the current silo approach. The December Ministerial, they argue, should adopt a new approach, abandoning modalities and emphasising horizontal negotiations. One contributor, exUSTR Susan Schwab, suggests abandoning the Round altogether and starting from scratch. While much of the energy in the Doha negotiations has been expended on traditional issues such as agriculture, and market access for goods and services, there is a long list of new issues that will only grow in importance over time. Several contributors advocate a programme of analysis and discussion that will help members better understand issues such as competition policy, climate change, and government procurement.
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Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
The current Doha deadlock is largely due to the absence of leadership from the major players. Expecting leadership now from any of the Big 5 is unrealistic. Baldwin and Evenett, drawing on their discussions with a wide-range of WTO delegations, suggest that one demarche that could help unblock the impasse is a bold move by the middlepower WTO members. They could seize the initiative by adopting a set of unilateral measures to offer to liberalise trade. The new commercial opportunities this would provide would remind exporters what they have to gain from the conclusion of the Round. Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett have acted with their usual speed and efficiency, assembling at short notice a distinguished group of authors whose essays identify solutions to Doha Deadlock. And as always, they have been very ably supported by Team Vox, in particular by Bob Denham, Samantha Reid, Anil Shamdasani and PierreLouis Vzina. We are grateful to them all. Stephen Yeo Chief Executive Officer May 2011
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The Doha dilemma: An introduction to the issues and possible solutions

Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett
Graduate Institute, Geneva and CEPR; University of St Gallen and CEPR
World leaders must make important decisions concerning the future of the Doha Round for the 31 May 2011 meeting of the WTO membership. This essay introduces the issues and summarises contributors suggestions for Next Steps. It argues that the best outcome would be for WTO members to agree to work towards a small package of deliverables for December 2011 and push the rest of the agenda items into the future perhaps with specific instructions for changing the basic negotiating protocols used to date. Global leaders face a dilemma over the WTO multilateral trade negotiations known as the Doha Round. The talks are dead in the water; both movement forwards and movement backwards seem blocked. How did we get here? Current and former trade policy officials typically emphasise two points. Ten years of talks have made some progress but it now must be taken as a hard fact that the Doha Round in its entirety will not finish this year. No government is willing to announce publicly that they want to abandon the Round. The sources of unwillingness vary. Some argue that abandoning the Round would throw away genuine progress, such as the ultimate phase-out of agricultural export subsidies. Others wish to maintain attention focused on particular problems in the trade system. Yet others simply fear that theyll be blamed for delivering the bad news.
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Next Steps: Saving the WTO from the Doha Round

World leaders must now decide how to tackle this dilemma at the WTOs next key meeting on 31 May 2011. Logically, there are only 3 roads ahead: Road 1: Declare failure and call for a period of reflection; Road 2: Buy time by suspending the Round; or Road 3: Think creatively about work-around solutions that avoid acrimony and lock in some of the progress to date. This eBook on Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis gathers the thinking of a handful of the worlds most experienced Doha experts, namely: former US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Indias former WTO Ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia, Chinas former WTO Ambassador Zenyu Sun, Canadas former WTO Ambassador John Weekes, and Hong Kongs former WTO Ambassador Stuart Harbinson all of whom spent years directly engaged in Doha negotiations.
Road 1: The pitfalls of declaring failure

Susan Schwab argues strongly that declaring Dohas demise is essential to allowing the WTO to move on. John Weekes likewise argues: It would be damaging to invest more resources and credibility in something that cant be done. Ujal Singh Bhatia, by contrast, argues that Road 1 could lead to unpredictable results. Zenyu Sun notes that declaring the Doha Round to be dead would be easy, but then what? Would such an announcement inspire people to inject more energy into the work of the organisation? Would it serve the purpose of strengthening the multilateral trading system? I rather doubt it, he writes. These judgements on the medium- to long-term ramifications differ, but the shortterm fallout is clear. Declaring the Round dead would invite an immediate storm of recrimination among WTO members. A great deal of hope and effort has been invested in the Round by nations across the globe. Most WTO members are still looking for the
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Doha Round to effect critical adjustments to the world trading system especially a rebalancing of the level of openness to agricultural versus industrial trade (Nassar and Perez 2011). If one or more of the Big-5 reject a deal that most members still think is doable, the blame game could get very nasty. There is a great danger that this level of ill-will could undermine multilateral trade cooperation for years. It could lock in the growing perception that the WTO is not a place where serious negotiations can be conducted. The US in particular is likely to be subject to severe criticism in a way that might have the unintended consequence of convincing US Congressional and private sector groups that the WTO is not a forum where America can do business. Such an outcome would serve no ones interests. Despite the clear logic of Schwabs and Weekes arguments, the pitfalls highlighted by Bhatia and Sun find resonance with most world leaders. This is why almost every WTO member opposes Road 1. As a consequence, it is extremely unlikely that WTO members will decide to declare Doha dead any time soon.
Road 2: The pitfalls of suspension

Suspension is certainly the most politically expedient choice for the Big-5, and it is superficially attractive. The logic is well expressed in the old story about a man condemned to death by his Emperor who obtains a years stay of execution by promising to teach the Emperors horse to sing. Much could happen in a year, the man reasons. The Emperor could die, I could die, the horse could sing. But the usual merits of muddling through dont apply to Doha. Suspensions have been tried so often that everyone would know that suspension is just a circuitous means of killing the Round; Road 2 is just the long route to Road 1. All the pitfalls of Road 1 therefore also apply to Road 2. But suspension would be even worse in many ways. The world of trade is changing more rapidly than negotiating positions, so each delay seems to make a compromise based on
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the existing elements even less likely. Worse still, a suspension would strengthen and spread the belief that the WTO is not an appropriate venue for multilateral negotiations. As Ujal Singh Bhatia writes: the Round will continue to hang like an albatross around the WTOs neck, preventing it from addressing new challenges to the global trading system. This would be particular worrisome since the world economy is moving into a phase of great stress. It is facing new challenges that will require multilateral solutions issues like food security, natural-resource export restrictions, and trade in goods, services and technology that are essential to climate-change adaption and mitigation.
Road 3: A small package followed by a big package

The third road seems the most likely way to move past the Doha dilemma of not being able to move forwards or backwards on the broad agenda. The idea here is that the agenda would be sorted into do-able and not yet do-able piles. Nations would move forward on a small package of do-ables for December 2011 while agreeing to discuss the bigger issues later under revised ground rules that would be more likely to permit the trade-offs necessary to make the big package acceptable to all members. As Stuart Harbinson puts it, Doha is like a ship run aground; a small package of deliverables for December 2011 would act as a patch to keep the good ship Doha afloat until the high tide comes in and lifts the ship off the rocks. In this analogy the high tide would be a change in the global economic and political seascape, enabling the major trading economies to settle their differences and bring the ship safely into harbour, he writes.
Choices to make on the small package

All five experienced trade negotiators contributing to this eBook and most of the WTO delegations with whom we spoke believe that it is worth trying to lock in agreement on a small number of areas by the end of 2011. There are two critical issues to decide:
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How much time should be spent on negotiating the small package? Which items should be in the small package?
The contributors disagree over the first issue. Susan Schwab argues for giving it not more than 2 weeks; others suggest longer. They all, however, recognise that a prolonged and contentious negotiation on a small package especially one that ultimately proved fruitless would solve nothing and might harm the system. There is far more agreement on the second issue possible composition of the small package. All the contributors, and most of the WTO delegations with whom we spoke, suggest that some items on Dohas massive negotiating agenda are close to conclusion. Indeed, the lists are remarkably similar despite the vast differences in the contributors perspectives. They all point out, however, that striking even a very restrained list of agreement will require abundant goodwill and hard negotiating. Suggestions for the small-package items include: Some sort of accord on duty-free, quota-free treatment for least developed nations; A waiver that allows WTO members to provide preferential access to services trade from least developed nations; An agreement to reduce distortions in cotton to the benefit of least developed nations; A package of measures that promote trade facilitation, i.e. reducing barriers to imports stemming from excessive red-tape barriers in customs, inferior port infrastructure, and other non-trade-policy impediments to trade; An agreement on a monitoring mechanism for special and differential treatment; An agreement to make permanent the transparency mechanism for regional trade agreements that has been operating successfully for years; An agreement on certain non-tariff barriers;
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An agreement formalising cooperation between the WTO and various multilateral environmental agreements. Other issues may ultimately prove tractable or necessary to provide balance. Those most often mentioned include a standstill agreement on fisheries subsidies, certain aspects of the less controversial rules negotiations, and export subsidies. Such a package could also include other DDA matters for which the negotiations could be completed quickly or non-DDA matters where the WTO membership is at one, such as the promising negotiations to upgrade the WTOs Agreement on Government Procurement. The final issue is what to call the small package; this is not a trivial matter. One option is to just boldly call the small package the Doha Round to declare victory and move on. While this would clearly disappoint many, it speaks to the objective of not letting the Round drag down the WTO not allowing the WTOs credibility to be further damaged by endless discussions that can never led to a happy ending. Of course, this option would leave unsolved the core Doha issues reducing distortions in and improving market access for industrial goods, agricultural products, and services trade, and updating the rules. But it might allow members to re-craft the parameters of the negotiations in a way that would be more likely to lead to success. This is clearly the view taken by Susan Schwab and John Weekes. As John Weekes puts it: Not completing the Doha Round would be a serious setback to the WTO and the multilateral trading system. However, if it is clear that the Round cannot be concluded successfully, it is better to admit that and work constructively to develop an agenda for the future work of the organisation. Another option would be to wrap up the collection of small agreements into a package called the Doha down payment or Doha deliverables, or Doha early harvest as a way of stressing that all the Doha agenda items are still on the table.
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A third option would be to view the individual items as standalone agreements to be agreed by the ministers of WTO members at the December meeting without clear reference to what comes next. This brings us to the next major element of the Road 3 pathway: What to do with the rest of the agenda?
Choices to make on the big package

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This makes it clear that any complete plan for a way past the Doha dilemma must change something in the way the negotiations have been operating. Any multilateral trade negotiation involves choice on a series of negotiating rules or conventions. The Doha Round has accreted an odd constellation of these. Some are fundamental and therefore extremely difficult to change. These include the idea that everything must be agreed by all before anything is agreed (the so-called singleundertaking principle) or the choice to focus on the particular tariff-cutting formula known as the Swiss formulas. But many of the choices are less central, such as the exact way in which flexibilities on tariff-cutting are to be decided. The ramifications of these procedures on the negotiating dynamic were not well understood years ago when the original decisions were taken. The lack of understanding is even deeper when it comes to the joint operation and interaction among the conventions. For these reasons, the set of negotiating conventions that guide Round may no longer be optimal. Consideration of the pros and cons of alternatives might identify other ways of finding a package of trade-offs that is acceptable to all.
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The forward-looking agenda

A number of contributors suggested that the process of rebuilding momentum and confidence in the ultimate outcome could be boosted by agreeing to launch work programmes (not actual negotiations) on how the WTO could address 21st-century trade issues that have come to the fore since the Doha agenda was set in 2001. Here, there are two basic lines. The first would consider WTO institutional reform; the second would consider new issues, such as new disciplines to underpin the increasing convergence of trade, investment, and services (as is now routinely done in regional trade agreements), setting limits on acceptable national climate policies with trade implications, or export restrictions. There certainly seems merit to these idea. If nothing else, it would interject new dimensions to discussions that have been going on for a decade. It would also make it clear that we need to safeguard the WTO as a forum for multilateral discussions on critical 21st-century issues.
Concluding remarks
Many decent, hard-working public servants have committed plenty of energy to the Doha Round since its inception. At this critical time, any temptation for recriminations or lapses into bitter disappointment should be set to one side to let governments chart a new path for the WTO. The circumstances facing WTO members in the middle of 2011 are hardly ideal, and the set of options that stand any chance of acceptance is narrow. In times like these, it would be a mistake to make the perfect the enemy of the good. It is time to think creatively and cooperatively about getting the WTO past the Doha crisis. A decision, or non-decision, that led to several more years of drift years that will be complicated by elections and changes in governments in some of the leading trading powers could turn out to be the beginning of the end for the WTOs role as leader of the global trading system. The alternative uncoordinated developments led by the
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Big-5 in their own systems of regional trade agreements is a very plausible outcome at this stage, but not one that will ultimately serve anyones long-run interests.
References
Andre Nassar and Carlos Perez (2011). Why WTO members should not give up the Doha Round: The case of agricultural trade, in Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett (eds.), Why World Leaders Must Resist the False Promise of a Doha Delay, VoxEU, April.
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There is no Plan B only Plan A: Towards completing Doha

Mari Pangestu
Minister of Trade, Indonesia
Doha is stalled by gaps that are unbridgeable today. Indonesias Trade Minister argues that we need to be guided by priorities and pragmatism. We should develop a set of stepping stones that will help us complete the Doha Round eventually. We should identify the areas that are achievable in the very near future but which have an impact on development while building confidence for the continued journey to a successful Round. We should never lose sight of the final goal completing the Doha Round as a single undertaking. In short, we are not looking for a Plan B; we are looking for a new way to execute Plan A. The importance of completing the Doha Development Agenda sooner rather than later goes beyond bringing gains of $360 billion of additional trade with substantial benefits for industrialised and developing economies (HLTE 2011). The importance also goes beyond what pragmatic soothsayers who are telling us: Why are you worried, the WTO system will continue to be robust whether we conclude Doha or not. Companies and countries will continue to trade. As a developing country policy maker and I believe I speak for many other developing countries I am greatly worried about the costs and opportunity lost of not completing Doha.
The costs of not completing Doha

I will point to four costs of not completing the Doha Round. First is what it could achieve for food security.
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During the 2008 food crisis, imbalances between supply and demand were partly attributed to distorted agriculture prices caused by trade-distorting export subsidies and domestic-support schemes. The agriculture package in Doha will go some way to address this. In todays situation of high commodity prices, now is the perfect time to address the removal and elimination of such trade-distorting policies. Removing these distortions can only be achieved through multilateral negotiations, not through bilateral or regional agreements. Most importantly, the winners would be the billions of hungry and poor people all over the world; correcting the system and ensuring the future supply of food and greater price stability is very much in their interests. For example, in Indonesia a 10% increase in the price of rice, without any change in income, would lead to a 1% increase in poverty. Second keeping protection at bay. During the depth of the crisis benign protectionism was the order of the day, according to the self-reporting surveillance mechanism established by the WTO at the request of G20 Leaders. This allowed the rebound of trade to become one of the costless ways for the global economy to recover. It is ironical that in the recovery, the latest report (WTO 2011) shows that there has been a slight increase in protectionism causing an estimated impact of 0.6% to G20 exports. The main increase has been due to tariff increases, automatic licenses, and other restrictions including export restrictions. Whilst this is still small, it is nevertheless double from the previous period. Restoration of the confidence in the world trading system through clear signals that we are progressing on completing the Round is crucial to keeping protectionism at bay. Developing countries such as Indonesia have a great interest in this because only the multilateral trading system will provide the fair, rulesbased trading system for us to face large and more developed partners on a fair and equal standing.
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Third the lack of progress on the Doha Round already has, and will continue to raise the pressure to undertake bilateral and regional free trade negotiations. In the ASEAN region there are already FTAs between ASEAN and all six of its dialog partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand), and numerous bilateral FTAs. The EU has just completed negotiations with Korea, which has put pressure for the Korea-US FTA to be ratified as soon as possible. The EU has also completed negotiations with India, and is negotiating with Singapore, Malaysia, and preparing to do so with other ASEAN countries. Recently China, Korea and Japan announced revitalization of their FTA initiative. Furthermore we have the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative between 8 members of APEC. It is not the bilateral and regional free trade agreements which are problematic per se; it is negotiating them in the absence of a robust WTO system a system which is seen as meeting the needs of the current and future trade-linked issues. Bilateral and regional agreements can only work towards complementing the multilateral trading system when they are WTO-plus, not WTO-instead. Fourth the potential dampening effect on unilateral reforms. The political economy of openness in trade policy and institutional reform have always functioned better within the framework of international commitments. Multilateral rules impose an important caveat on what countries can or cannot do. In a country like Indonesia this has worked to our advantage in the way we frame our reforms, and in fact has functioned in the past to put bad policies to rest. For instance in the famous National Car case in the mid 1980s, which violated the MFN principle by allowing duty-free imports of cars only from one source country, the domestic politics at the time did not allow for policymakers to remove this policy. The policy was finally ended through the WTOs dispute settlement mechanism. It would be too bad for reforms if the process is undertaken within weakened confidence of multilateral trading system, or one which will eventually not be relevant to the evolution of 21st century trade issues.
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The Way Forward: No Plan B

Despite G20 Leaders commitments, and all the good intentions and intensive work in Geneva that came after the push given by trade ministers during their informal meeting in Davos in January 2011, it proved impossible to arrive at a draft text by the end-ofApril milestone. There remains unbridgeable gaps in a number of main negotiating groups, namely non-agriculture market access. Given this situation, trade ministers met first during the APEC Ministers of Trade Meeting in Big Sky Montana, and then on the fringes of the OECD meeting in Paris. Fortunately all have agreed that we all remain committed to completing Doha as a single undertaking. However, there was a sense of realism as to the timing and pathways to achieve this desirable outcome in a timely way. From an Indonesian perspective there is no Plan B. We do not support a Doha Light, and we remain committed to a comprehensive, ambitious, and balanced package building on what we have achieved to date. After almost 6 years of negotiations since the key Hong Kong WTO Ministerial, I believe we are more than 50% or some would say 80% of the way done. A realistic way forward is to identify the sequence of steps that would take us to the final outcome; this is necessary to avoid the costs and lost-opportunities I outlined above. This is not about an early harvest or cherry picking and then stopping. It is about identifying the steps forward in a meaningful way towards the final goal of the single undertaking of Doha.
Identifying stepping stones to a final Doha Round conclusion

There are areas within the negotiations that could be seen as steps towards the final package. Of course work and political will is still needed to find ways to bridge the
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unbridgeable gaps. In identifying the areas where we could find convergence, a number of priorities stand out. First and foremost is areas of negotiations that will contribute and deliver to development objectives such as the Least Developed Countries package and/or an effective aid-for-trade, and facilitation package; this is, after all, a Development Round. Second areas where there would be clear benefits for development and the private sector in facilitating and ensuring the benefits of trade are greater; we need stakeholders to be cheerleading the way forward. Third there could be areas where we would be able to address the food-security challenge. One could also foresee that, within each current area of negotiations, there could be items which could be wrapped up without disturbing the overall balance of elements in that particular area. It is important that we do not go into new negotiations in identifying which areas. We should go into the mode of identifying these pathways and steps with the mindset and political will of win-win. We need to be guided by priorities and pragmatism. That is, to identify the areas that are doable and achievable in the very near future, but which have an impact on development and increasing the benefits of trade, while at the same time building confidence for us to continue our journey to the final package. Most importantly, we should never lose sight of the final goal of the single undertaking.
Looking forward
It is also important to provide the signal in what we say and do elsewhere. Beyond talking about Doha, we must ensure continued confidence in and implementation of the rules-based, open trading system.
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This would mean the commitments of G20 Leaders and others on refraining from protectionism going beyond words; the good intentions need to be strengthened with commitments and actions. It also has implications for how we undertake bilateral and regional agreements; these should be done in a way that is not an alternative to, and does not detract from the multilateral trading system. We should pursue regionalism in a way which is going to contribute to and complement the system.
Concluding remarks
In conclusion, we should not underestimate the costs of not doing all this. We will need to draw upon the strength of our individual and collective political commitment. We need to call on the ability of some major economies to look beyond pure national interests, and to look at the impact and costs on the global system and economy. And we need to remember that there are many countries and billions of people many of which are impoverished who are waiting for the Doha deliverables.
References
HLTE (2011), World trade and the Doha round, final report of the High-Level Trade Experts Group chaired by Jagdish Bhagwati and Peter Sutherland. WTO (2011). Reports on G20 trade and investment measures (mid-October 2010 to April 2011), WTO Secretariat, 24 May.
About the author

Mari Pangestu is Indonesias Minister of Trade since 2004, having served as Executive Director of the Jakarta-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a lecturer in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indonesia. From 1991 to 1998, Dr. Pangestu was the coordinator of the Trade Policy Forum of the Pacific
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Economic Cooperation Council, and serves on the Board of the Overseas Development Council; World Gold Council; and the Asian Journal of Business from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has published widely on a range of subjects including matters pertaining to Indonesia as well as regional (i.e. Asian and Asia Pacific) and global issues. She earned her B.A. and M.A. in economics from Australian National University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Davis.
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Acknowledge Dohas demise and move on to save the WTO

Susan Schwab
University of Marlyand; former U.S. Trade Representative
The Doha Round has failed, according the former US Trade Representative Susan Schwab. This essay argues that prolonging Doha jeopardises the multilateral trading system and threatens future prospects for WTO-led liberalisation. Negotiators should salvage whatever partial agreements they can from Doha, and quickly drop the rest to ensure the December ministerial meeting focuses on future work plans rather than recriminations over Doha. The Doha Round has failed. It is time for the international community to acknowledge this sad fact and move on. Prolonging the pretence that the Doha Round will succeed is now a greater threat to the WTO and the multilateral trading system than facing the truth. A great many smart, hard-working and well-intentioned individuals have worked over many years to realise Dohas potential to contribute to global economic growth and development. But what is on the table in Geneva has failed to deliver any outcome, let alone a meaningful one. It is time for a swift, clean break from the past and to lay the groundwork for a future where the WTO and its members revive WTO-led liberalisation and reform.
End Dohas stranglehold and build towards near-term wins

To keep the multilateral trading system healthy, it is necessary to end the Doha Rounds stranglehold on the system. This should happen quickly in order to ensure that the December 2011 ministerial meeting focuses on future work plans, rather than
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recriminations about a Doha Development Agenda that has struggled through one failed encounter after another. Negotiators should refocus their efforts on near-term wins and on building the next Round which need not be another behemoth, but perhaps a rolling round of reforms and new market access, or a few highest-common-denominator plurilateral, or WTOplus deals. Ultimately, these should lead to a broader-based market access and rules agreement under the multilateral auspices of the WTO.
The small package possibility

In my recent Foreign Affairs article (Schwab 2011), I suggested that negotiators should try to salvage whatever partial agreements they can and then walk away from the rest. I mentioned a number of potential candidates, such as trade facilitation and the largely completed agricultural-export pillar (comprising proposed agreements on export credits, food aid, state-trading firms, and the elimination of export subsidies). Negotiators might also try to complete two environment-related agreements, one cutting subsidies to industrial fishing fleets that are overfishing the worlds oceans, and the other ending tariff and nontariff barriers to green technologies in major producing and consuming countries. Taken together or individually, each of these would benefit countries across the spectrum of economic development. I am, however, sceptical that even these small agreements are achievable in the current climate of mistrust and entrenched positions. A troubling development during the course of the Round has been how often countries seem to forget or forfeit their own economic interests let alone the greater good in the face of peer pressure and group-think. In the current environment, even these smaller deals might prove impossible to achieve. It is certainly worth trying to achieve a few deliverables by taking a run at a small package, but negotiators should not spend too much time on it. They already know exactly what the options are; if they cannot get to yes in, say, two weeks, they should
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give up and move on to the real challenge of launching a new series of multilateral negotiations under WTO auspices.
Getting past Doha

How to conclude the Doha Round? One option would be for the Director-General and a representative sample of WTO Ambassadors to come together in the interest of the institution and to offer a declaration of Dohas demise, along with their pledge to begin building the future. That would enable leaders at the November G20 meeting to pledge their support for the rules-based trading system, the WTO and its next steps, rather than for the ever elusive balanced and ambitious Doha outcome. After a short period of grieving over the death of Doha and an opportunity to get beyond the anger, lead trading nations should refocus on getting the WTO back into its mainstream business of negotiating mutually advantageous market opening, and updating the global rules of the road. This approach offers the best promise of a meaningful development outcome as well.
How might this be achieved?

It seems unrealistic to think WTO members would agree to launch another massive all-or-nothing round in the near future. Such broad negotiations, however, will be necessary to tackle some of the worlds most important market access challenges in services, manufacturing, and agriculture, along with such issues as farm subsidies. There are ways to build-up to the big-round model again, where countries once more see economic self-interest in the use of broad-based negotiations and trade-offs to achieve both new market access and market reforms. First, however, we must re-establish trust and regain momentum. One way forward would be for ministers to agree to launch a number of confidencebuilding negotiations. For example, ministers in December could decide to open talks
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on expanding the 1997 Information Technology Agreement; a number of nations seem interested and the US Administration already has the authority to implement an enhanced agreement. If negotiators fail to work through the 850 brackets in the current Doha trade facilitation text, that could also be tackled as a stand-alone agreement, since each nation would benefit from more efficient movement of goods and services across borders. Another confidence-building measure might be a merger of sectoral agreements geared toward a widely-shared objective, such as cheaper, better healthcare. A package that included pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and healthcare services might attract support from the broad array of WTO members across the development spectrum. Given the high-level of public interest in and awareness of environment issues, a sectoral negotiation on environmental goods and services might be another confidence-building deal, once it is removed from the straightjacket that Doha has become.
Lessons from Doha for next steps and the next round
Confidence building agreements would offer modest economic and social contributions, and serve to prepare the atmospherics for launch the next Round. This brings me to my last topic the lessons we should draw from a decade of Doha talks. One thing that is quite clear from years of struggling with the basic structure of Doha is that the combination of formula and self-selected flexibilities has not worked. It resulted in a situation where every negotiator had to assume the worst case knowing the political costs they would pay for their own liberalisation, but expecting their trading partners to use flexibilities to negate any meaningful new market-access. It is possible to draw from the best of the Doha formulas such as the higher the barrier, the greater the cut while still creating real negotiations around them through requests and offers delivered using above- and below-formula cuts.
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Another key lesson is that lumping the worlds very diverse economies into three basic categories developed, developing, and least developed is a practice that no longer fits 21st century economic and trade realities. Nor is it a structure conducive to negotiations and real progress based on an exchange of market access among nations with large markets. Yes, the advanced economies should be expected to do more than those at lesser stages of economic development, but expectations should also reflect the fact that many emerging economies are characterised by both poverty and sectors where they are globally competitive trade powerhouses. The emerging economies have large markets, represent over half of global GDP growth, and stand to be the biggest winners from any major trade agreement. They should be expected to contribute to the next Round accordingly. Major trade agreements generally take at least 12 years to implement from the time they are initially concluded. What should the world trading system look like in 2025 in terms of the absolute and relative responsibilities of key trading nations?
Concluding remarks
I am optimistic when it comes to the multilateral trading system and the WTOs central role in its governance. The optimistic scenario is that we put the Doha Round behind us. Facing facts can invigorate and strengthen the trading system. If we fail to act, the WTO risks losing its relevance. The Doha Round which in my view cannot be concluded as it is conceived today should not be allowed to continue draining the WTOs credibility and potential progress on the multilateral front. Now is the time to liberate the would-be trade liberalisers from the Doha straightjacket and move on.
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References
Schwab, Susan (2011). After Doha: Why the negotiations are doomed and what we should do about it, Foreign Affairs, May/June.
About the author

Ambassador Schwab has been a Professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy since January 2009 and a strategic advisor to Mayer Brown, LLP (global law firm) since March 2010. Ambassador Schwab served as U.S. Trade Representative from June 2006 to January 2009 and as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from October 2005 to June 2006. Prior to her service as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Schwab served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the University System of Maryland Foundation from June 2004 to October 2005, as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Treasury from July 2003 to December 2003 and as Dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy from July 1995 to July 2003. Ambassador Schwab serves on the boards of Boeing Company, Caterpillar Inc. and FedEx Corporation. She holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Williams College, a Masters in Development Policy from Stanford University (Food Research Institute), and a Ph.D. in Public Administration and International Business from The George Washington University.
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Next Steps: Getting past the Doha Round crisis

Ujal Singh Bhatia
Formerly Indias Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the WTO
Hopes for finishing Doha in 2011 are fading fast. This essay suggests a three-track approach for moving beyond the Doha crisis. 1) Identify a package of deliverables parts of the Round that could be agreed by December 2011. 2) Assemble a package of contentious issues for ongoing negotiation with clear terms of reference. 3) Establish a work programme to consider WTO institutional reform and forward-looking issues. For reasons that are too well known to be repeated, the WTO finds itself at the crossroads. Decisions to be taken in the next few weeks will determine whether it can steer its way to a successful conclusion of the Doha Round in the near future. Failing this, the Round will continue to hang like an albatross around the WTOs neck, preventing it from delivering the promised boost to least developed nations and freezing its ability to address new challenges to the global trading system. All countries would suffer from such an outcome, but especially the worlds poorest and most vulnerable.
The cost of a never-ending Doha Round

The adverse implications of a continuing Doha impasse on the future role of the WTO are too compelling to be dismissed offhandedly. Several trade-linked global problems require global cooperation. Food security, energy security, trade-related aspects of climate change, labour mobility, commodity price volatility, and integration of regional liberalisation into the multilateral system are problems that can only be solved with global cooperation.
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For example, if food exporters continue to impose export barriers when prices rise, food importers may respond with import barriers to boost self-sufficiency. This sort of protectionist reverberation could lead the world to a situation in which all the players are worse off but none can improve the situation unilaterally. Avoiding this sort of outcome would require global agreements. There are very few global institutions that could manage such cooperation; indeed the WTO might be the only one. A WTO locked in endless Doha debates cannot be the centre of the rules based global trading system. There are many thinkers who believe that the structure of WTO rules is robust enough to withstand a Doha failure. It is true that the sky will not fall if Doha is terminated without a conclusion. Such analysts, however, tend to underestimate the significant structural changes taking place in the global economy and the trading system. The WTO is working on a set of rules agreed upon in 1994 that were based on an agenda set almost a quarter of century ago. These are still useful and relevant for much of world trade but not all. For instance, the rules were not designed for the technologydriven fragmentation of the manufacturing process and the distribution of the product value chain across several geographical locations, the intertwining of production with related services, the embedded intellectual property rights in components and subcomponents, or the multiplicity of rules of origin. All these require a different approach to rule making. A WTO that remains preoccupied with the Doha Round cannot be expected to focus on such issues. Therefore, the continuing relevance of the WTO and its primacy in the global trading system are contingent upon a successful and early conclusion of the Doha Round. Notwithstanding this urgency, it is now clear that a Doha package cannot be wound up in 2011 along the lines agreed by G20 leaders in November 2010. To prevent this from tying the WTO in knots for years to come, it is necessary to think creatively about ways forward.
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Ideas for moving beyond the impasse

Any effort to deal with the impasse in the negotiations needs to be based on a holistic appreciation of the systemic implications of a continuing stalemate as much as on the negotiating positions of various members. The efforts for a solution acceptable to all members therefore need to focus on issues in the Doha mandate as well as on issues for a post Doha situation. Within this framework, four constraints need to be borne in mind: A Doha Lite of reduced ambition will not work. The outcome has to reflect a decades efforts of the global community. Ambition, however, cannot be defined to suit the convenience of a few members. It must touch all aspects of the Doha mandate. Aspects of the Doha mandate that are more relevant to the development dimension have to be ambitiously addressed and fast tracked. WTO needs to start work on a new work programme to address new challenges. The Doha Round cannot be completed in 2011. A down payment is necessary from the Doha Round this year to convince the world that the WTO can deliver.
A three-track approach
These constraints require the WTO to adopt a three-track approach during the next few months leading up to the ministerial meeting in December 2011. Track 1: Identification of a list of issues that specially address the trading interests of smaller developing countries and relatively less contentious issues, for fast tracked finalisation before the ministerial meeting. Track 2: Identification of a package of the more contentious issues for continuing consultations with clear terms of reference. Track 3: Identification of appropriate terms of reference for a work programme on WTO institutional reform, and the forward-looking agenda.
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A possible timeline
These three tracks, taken as a package, would provide a way forward that respects all four constraints. Achieving consensus on them would be difficult and require months of preparatory work and negotiations. If the WTO membership starts immediately, however, there is still time to get the package ready for finalisation by ministers at the December 2011 ministerial meeting. For this to happen, it is essential that discussions on such a package begin this month so that its contents can be finalised by the end of June 2011. This would leave about four working months before the ministerial meeting to complete negotiations on the selected areas.
What the three tracks might contain

The first track would contain the Doha down-payment package. As with any WTO package the contents would need to be negotiated, and it might require complementary policies such as technical assistance initiatives. Such a list must include items that speak to development aspects of the Doha mandate, such as: The Implementation of the Hong Kong decision on duty-free, quota-free treatment for less developed countries; A ministerial decision on the Monitoring Mechanism for Special and Differential Treatment provisions; A ministerial decision on the issues raised by the Sub-Saharan African cotton exporters (the group known as the C-4); and The finalisation of a less-developed-country (LDC) waiver in services so that preferential treatment can be provided to LDCs in services without extending it to others.
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It should also include areas of the negotiations that engage the interest of all members such as: Trade Facilitation; All aspects of export competition in agriculture including export subsidies; The Transparency Mechanism for regional trade agreements (RTAs); The non-tariff barriers (NTBs) package in non-agricultural market access (NAMA); and A ministerial decision on interactions and relationships between the WTOs rules and its committees, on the one hand, and existing multilateral environmental agreements, on the other (e.g. the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes, and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer). While some members would like to exclude some of these areas from a fast tracked process in the hope of using them for trade offs in the final stage, it is important that the package is as comprehensive as possible.
Track two: Items for further negotiation

The second track would gather all remaining items currently under negotiations. This would include: All aspects of market access in industrial goods, agriculture and services; All aspects of subsidies in agriculture; Various aspects of rules, including fisheries subsidies; Environmental goods; and Issues related to trade-related aspects of international property rights (TRIPS) regarding the protection of Geographical Indicators, and the protection of traditional
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knowledge and folklore that were are mentioned in the Convention on Biological Diversity1. The need for a balanced package deserves emphasis. It is often assumed that there is a straight trade-off between agricultural subsidies and market access. The situation however, is more complex. The interest of countries like India, China, and Indonesia in agricultural reform is more systemic than export related. For them other incentives, within the mandate, will be required.
Track three: Looking ahead

The underlying theme for the work programme would be an appraisal of the entire negotiating and decision-making process in the WTO in the context of the present realities both within and outside the organisation. The objective would be to prepare the WTO to address new challenges to the global trading system concurrently with the ongoing work on the remaining parts of the Doha mandate.
Closing remarks
The above proposals constitute a basic template for addressing the Doha conundrum. To what extent they are actually embraced will depend on how much political capital the major members of the WTO are prepared to invest in moving the Doha Round forward. There is much scepticism about whether such political will exists. It is time for governments to prove the sceptics wrong.
Specifically, as specified in paragraphs 18 and 19 of the Doha Declaration.
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About the author

Ambassador Bhatia Singh joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1974, holding several senior positions in provincial administration in Orissa State between 1976 and 1995. He served as Joint Secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry between 19952000, in which capacity he handled a number of bilateral, regional and multilateral trade negotiations. From 2004 to his retirement in 2010, he served as Indias Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the WTO in Geneva.
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Next Steps: Is an early harvest still possible?

Zhenyu Sun
China Society for World Trade Organization Studies
Doha is deadlocked. This essay argues that the options are: i) to declare the negotiations dead, ii) to suspend them until after the US elections, or iii) to negotiate an earlyharvest agreement for the end of this year. The author strongly believes that the early harvest is worth the extra efforts for both the WTO and the worlds poorest. I am greatly interested in the discussions among experts and professors recently on the future of the Doha Round. While I can feel their strong sense of frustration about the deadlock, I dont see any real possible solutions for the problems at hand. I dont have one either. The lack of a solution is probably due more to political problems than to technical problems.
Next steps
To announce that the Doha Round is dead would be easy. But then what? Would such an announcement inspire people to inject more energy to the work of the organisation? Would it serve the purpose of strengthening the multilateral trading system? I rather doubt it. After dropping the Round, what could be done next? Just continue with business as usual? Should members only focus on trade policy reviews, on regular meetings in the bodies under the General Council, and on dispute settlement cases? Should they take it for granted that the panellists and Appellate Body members will be able to fill in the gaps of writing new rules for the world trading system? This does not sound very attractive.
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The need for progress and the difficult options

If the WTO is to remain relevant, its members must negotiate new rules. How could they do this? Could there be a completely new round sometime later? Or could there be new rules or amendments of the old ones adopted at each and every council or committee separately? One option would be to launch a new round. To start a new round post-Doha, however, could be even more difficult than the Doha Round itself. People have tasted the failure of Seattle. In any new round members could not ignore the built-in agenda of agricultural subsidies, or discussing the tariff-cutting formula on agricultural and nonagricultural products, or services trade, and rules. It may still be difficult to cover labour and environmental standards. In any case, the hard bargaining over the past 10 years would not disappear with the start of a new round. Another option could be to rule out all rounds after Doha. To not even to talk about the single undertaking any more, i.e. to abandon the negotiating principle, heretofore respected, where all WTO members must agree to all aspects of the final package. This option would just let the councils and committees continue with their normal functions, setting new rules and amending old ones on their own. I personally believe this option might be feasible, but it is not in line with 60 years of WTO common practice. Members may not like this option because it could rule out trade-offs across interests in other areas.
Early harvest as the way forward

If dropping the Round is not an attractive option, and if waiting till after the next US election is likewise unappealing, the only option left is some kind of early harvest to be adopted at the December 2011 ministerial meeting. I am fully aware that some members are strongly against the idea of an early harvest. Even if they could eventually negotiate a duty-free quota-free agreement for the worlds
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poorest nations, an agreement on cotton, and an agreement on trade facilitation, they are unlikely to agree to implement them now because they will need to use these issues to negotiate trade-offs with their other interests. I would like to make an appeal to those members.
Guarding the future of the multilateral trading system

It is high time that people gave more considerations to the future of the multilateral trading system and less to their short-term national economic interests. As the APEC leaders reiterated at a recent summit: We uphold the primacy of the multilateral trading system and reaffirm that this strong, rules-based system is an essential source of sustainable economic growth, development, and stability. We take considerable satisfaction in the success of the WTO, its existing framework of rules, and its consultative mechanisms in contributing to the beginnings of global economic recovery. The WTO has amply proven its worth as a bulwark against protectionism during a highly challenging period. I do hope that people take this statement seriously. This means giving thought to ways to save the credibility of this organisation, to deliver the promise of a development round, and to make sure that this organisation is still relevant to 21st century trade matters. Safeguarding the future of the WTO is particularly important at a time when the world has experienced the global financial and economic crisis, the upheaval in the Middle East, and when we face great uncertainties.
Content of the early harvest

Certainly there could be more detailed discussions on what issues should be included in the possible package. If members are willing to move along that line, there is still time to finalise the content. My friend Ujal Singh Bhatia (WTO Ambassador from India until
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2010) has indicated some areas where members could try to build consensus and adopt a decision at the December 2011 ministerial meeting (Bhatia 2011). I strongly believe that it is worthwhile to make some extra efforts along the lines he has proposed. In any case, duty-free-quota-free treatment for LDCs and the issue of cotton have to be included in the package. These are decisions taken at the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting; its immediate implementation would be conducive to addressing the great concerns of the poorest countries and thus very much in line with the principle of the Doha Development Round. Trade facilitation could bring benefit to all members. It could help trade expansion enormously and bring even more benefit to trade than would further reduction of tariffs. It could also help President Obama achieve the goals of doubling US exports in the next 5 years and substantially increasing employment at home. The date for expiration of export subsidies at 2013 was adopted at the Hong Kong ministerial meeting and should be included in the package. The EU may want to bring in some other issues to balance its interests. Personally, I believe it is doable through adding some issues of their interest, such as environment products, to the package.
Concluding remarks
When they meet in Geneva this December, I am sure that members would prefer to have their trade ministers making some kind of substantive decisions. An early package for the Doha Round is probably a suitable one for the ministers to consider and to deliver at their meeting later this year.
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References
Singh Bhatia, Ujal (2011), Salvaging Doha, VoxEU.org, 10 May.
About the author

Zhenyu Sun, the Chairman of China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, served as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of China to the WTO from 2002 to 2010. He served as vice minister of Moftec (Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, which later became Mofcom, Ministry of Commerce) from November 1994 till 2002 when he went to Geneva as WTO Ambassador. Born in Fengnan County of Hebei Province in March 1946, Mr. Sun Zhenyu graduated from Beijing Foreign Languages Institute in July 1969. From 1973 to 1985, he served successively as staff member, Deputy Director and Director in the Third Department for Regional Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Trade. During this period, he worked on bilateral trade relations between China and UK, later between China and European Community. From 1985 to 1990, he worked as Vice President of China National Cereals, Oil and Foodstuff Import and Export Corporation (COFCO), focusing on the companys business with Japan and South-east Asian Countries. In 1989, he attended one year program of Management Training Course for senior executives sponsored by UNDP in cooperation with University of British Colombia, Canada and Manchester University UK. From 1990 to 1994, he served as Deputy Director General and Director General of Department of American and Oceanic Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (MOFTEC), working on bilateral trade relations with U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin American countries during this period. He participated on separate occasions in Sino-US bilateral negotiations on Market Access, Textiles and Intellectual Property Rights.
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Getting past the Doha Round crisis: Moving forward in the WTO
John Weekes
Bennett Jones LLP
The Doha Round is stuck. This essay argues that finishing Doha would be best, but if this is impossible, we should admit it and move on. Investing more resources and credibility in a failure would only damage the WTO and multilateral cooperation. Leaders should turn their energies towards building an agenda for the WTOs future work that responds to 21st century interests. Getting this right is critical; the WTO cannot afford another failure if Doha dies. An early harvest is an excellent idea, but only if it can be done quickly. Bringing the Doha negotiations to a successful conclusion is by far the best course of action. The valuable contribution that such a development would make to strengthen the trading system has been examined at length elsewhere. No single achievement would be more valuable than binding in the WTO rulebook the current level of trade protection maintained by its members in all three areas of market access industrial goods, agriculture, and services. This action would permanently capture the considerable liberalisation that has taken place since the effective conclusion of Uruguay Round in 1993. It would also set a new start line for the launch of any subsequent negotiations, which will surely come before too long.
If Doha cannot be completed

Not completing the Doha Round would be a serious setback to the WTO and the multilateral trading system. However, if it is clear that the Round cannot be concluded successfully, it is better to admit that and work constructively to develop an agenda for
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the future work of the organisation. It would be damaging to invest more resources and credibility in something that cant be done. The WTO itself remains an extremely valuable institution. Its worth has been proven by the role it played in discouraging its member governments from taking protectionist actions during the recent global economic crisis. The continued accession of new members to the organisation is a further indication of just how valuable it is to the international community. In a world of global supply chains, business needs a set of multilateral rules within which to operate now more than ever.
Avoid the blame game

If the members decide that the Round cannot be brought to a successful conclusion it will be important to avoid recrimination. One thing is clear; a major and sustained effort has been made by all the members to try to deliver a successful outcome. While avoiding recrimination, WTO members should spend some time reflecting on the reasons for the current difficulties. One common mistake is to argue that the WTO as a whole is too big. Many outside observers suggest that, with 153 members, the WTO is too unwieldy an organisation to address the challenges of 21st century trade, particularly when decisions are taken on the basis of consensus. It is important to note, therefore, that blockages preventing conclusion of the Round are not the large number of members, but rather differences among the largest and most powerful trading countries, who would need to be party to the conclusion of any major trade negotiation. One reason for Dohas problems is that the preparatory process for the Round was inadequate. While the built-in agenda that emerged in Marrakesh led to useful work and provided a good basis in some areas, it did not permit the sort of broad thinking that should have gone into preparations for a major negotiating effort. After the failure
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in Seattle, launching the Round as a political act in the face of terrorist threats in 2001 was not an adequate foundation.
Develop the WTOs future work programme over the next two years
WTO member governments should now begin to plan the future work programme of the WTO. The last major work programme undertaken in the multilateral trading system began at the fractious GATT ministerial meeting in 1982. The work then undertaken in the GATT was supported by efforts undertaken in other international organisations and domestically by the various contracting parties (as members were called back then). The product of those efforts became the basis for launching, and then concluding, the Uruguay Round negotiations. Obviously the world of 2011 is very different from that of 1982. Global supply chains and the seamless connections between trade in goods, trade in services, and investment present a series of new challenges for the trading system. Members should start to plan the future work now. But this is work that should be done properly and not in haste. One of the problems with the 1990s built-in agenda was that it was very difficult to introduce any new items into the discussion, even including consideration of further tariff liberalisation. In order to avoid such difficulties, it would be useful to develop the future agenda over a two-year period. Ministers at Decembers ministerial conference could ask the General Council and the Director-General to consider the matter and come forward with suggestions for the future work of the organisation at the next ministerial conference in 2013.
Do we need Doha down payments?

Many players and observers have raised the question of what might be salvaged or harvested if the Doha Round cannot be finished this year. This is an excellent idea provided it can be done quickly and efficiently. If, however, it is going to take, say, more than six months, the effort should be abandoned. I suspect it will not be easy to agree
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on which parts of the Doha Round should be salvaged given the different priorities of WTO members. The effort would also serve the purpose of testing whether the WTO can negotiate agreements outside the context of a round. It would be very useful to have an answer to that question.
Concluding remarks
If the Doha Round is not successful, the WTO cannot afford another failure. Building a solid agenda for the future work of the WTO that responds to the real interests of its members needs to be a central task of the organisation.
About the author

John Weekes is senior international trade policy adviser at Bennett Jones LLP with a long experience in trade diplomacy and trade policy. He was Canadas Ambassador to the WTO from 1995 to 1999, and Chair of the WTO General Council in 1998. He was instrumental in the creation of the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements and served as its chair from its inception in 1996 until he became Chair of the General Council. Prior to that, he was Canadas Chief Negotiator for NAFTA (1993 to 1995), and Canadas Ambassador to the GATT during the last multilateral trade negotiations (Uruguay Round). He was a member of Canadas negotiating team to the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations in the 1970s. He is on the Board of the Washington-based Cordell Hull Institute, and Chaired the Management Board of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law in Geneva.
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The good ship Doha: Salvage-andabandon-ship or repair-and-wait?

Stuart Harbinson
Sidley Austin LLP
The core Doha goals better market access and rules for agricultural, industrial, and services trade still matter, but Doha is a ship run aground. This essay argues that the choices are: i) to abandon ship and try with a new ship later, or ii) to patch up the holes by delivering some progress in December 2011 and then wait for a high tide to carry us off the rocks. Only the latter is likely to achieve the core goals. The good ship Doha is well and truly stuck on the rocks. Lets make no mistake the rocks are substantial and there is no magic solution that will instantaneously get us off them. The choice now facing us is to salvage what we can and abandon ship, or to patch up the holes, wait for a high tide, and sail on. While the agenda is 10 years old and showing its age in some respects, few are currently advocating its abandonment. This is because the issues at the heart of the Round still matter namely, market access and rules for trade in agriculture, industrial products, and services. The critical test for deciding on immediate next steps should be whether they would facilitate or complicate ultimate resolution of these difficult issues.
Salvage and re-launch new negotiations: An option that wont work

With a ministerial conference coming up in December, attention has turned to what some call salvage. A salvage operation implies that the vessel is no longer seaworthy; we should just grab what we can and leave the ship to smash itself to pieces on the rocks. We would then have to look for another ship. One of the problems with this
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scenario is that it would take quite a while to design and construct a new vessel suitable for WTO negotiations. Even then, the new ship will have to negotiate its way around many of the same rocks. The problems we face in agricultural and industrial market access, for example, will not simply disappear. Its tempting to think that we can simply salvage a few things, forget about Doha, and start all over again with a better chance of success. The reality would surely prove to be quite different.
Repair and carry on

This leaves us with the option of repair-and-carry-on (though not necessarily in the same way as in the past). We would thereby acknowledge, as Ujal Bhatia Singh eloquently put it recently, that we are lashed to the mast of Doha (Bhatia 2011). This, however, should not be interpreted to mean that the WTO as an institution is locked in a death embrace with the Doha Round. Deliverables for the ministerial conference could constitute a patch to keep the ship afloat until the high tide comes. In this analogy the high tide would be a change in the global economic and political seascape, enabling the major trading economies to settle their differences and bring the ship safely into harbour. Admittedly there is an element of hope in this, but on balance it does not seem likely that the present, highly inimical environment (recession, unemployment, exchange rate issues, major domestic policy preoccupations, etc.) will persist indefinitely. Furthermore, as a result of intensive work in recent months, key members are now much clearer about the remaining gaps and what it would take to bridge them a very useful position from which to restart at the right time.
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The Doha Round is durable for a reason

That the Doha Round persists after the vicissitudes of over nine years of negotiations is testimony to its robustness. The widely held view that it was launched off-the-cuff in reaction to the tragic events of 9/11 without substantive business or political backing is not borne out by the historical record, nor does it tally with my own experience as Chairman of the General Council at the time. In the first place, it is inconceivable that such a complex undertaking could have been agreed in the space of two months. Efforts to launch a round in fact began well before the ill-fated Seattle Ministerial Conference in 1999. These efforts received considerable reinforcement from the failure of the Uruguay Round built-in agenda negotiations on agriculture and services to deliver results. Recall that the Agreement on Agriculture refers to the Continuation of the Reform Process, a process to which many governments and industries were and still are strongly committed. Many services industries, stimulated by the WTOs successes in moving forward in financial services and basic telecommunications in the late 1990s, were similarly champing at the bit. While it is true that there was also some opposition, the history of the preparatory process in 2001 shows clearly that, well before 9/11, the working hypothesis for the Doha Ministerial Conference was the launch of a new round. As the first chairman of the Doha agriculture negotiations commencing in 2002, I can also testify personally to the intense business and political interest at that time. If such interest has subsided, this could be ascribed to the apparent lack of movement in the negotiations and the changing political and economic dynamics since the Round was launched.
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Deliverables would be welcome as long as expectations are reasonable

Given the extremely strong commitment displayed by WTO members both in launching the Round and resolutely pushing it forward over an extended period, as well as the high-level political commitment restated only six months ago, a concerted effort to identify a decent number of deliverables for the eighth ministerial conference in December would certainly be welcome. Nevertheless it might be prudent not to invest too much expectation in this process. There is a danger that such an exercise would involve multiple shopping lists which would prove in a number of instances to be irreconcilable. The last thing the WTO needs at present is to have a lengthy and acrimonious discussion about deliverables culminating in a paltry agreement or, worse still, no agreement at all.
Possible deliverables
The emphasis on deliverables should be on the rules elements of the Round since market access remains highly contentious and linkages make it unlikely that partial results could be delivered. Even within rules, few issues come without caveats attached. Among the candidates (concentrating on Doha issues, in no particular order) appear to be the following: Trade facilitation is most often mentioned, although substantive issues remain to be resolved, including technical assistance. It is questionable if an agreement should be rushed into if it involves too many compromises. However, if it can be delivered, this would be a major boost. An agreement on the export competition pillar in the agriculture negotiations would also be a very substantive contribution. Whether the political will exists to settle this in advance of the remainder of the agriculture package is a question that will need to be answered.
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Domestic regulation in services may be considered as another significant possibility. However this item is linked with market access and the stumbling block of the necessity test issue remains, so the chances may not be great. Non-tariff barriers: There should be a trawl through the negotiating issues in an attempt to identify possible deliverables. Realistically, an agreement on transparency may be the most likely. The least-developed country waiver in services is more feasible though its utility is limited without services commitments. Progress building on the duty-free-quota-free (DFQF) market access commitments for least-developed country agreed at the Sixth Ministerial Conference would be highly desirable. However, there are political issues to be overcome. Reviews of Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) schemes in the US and EU may be a complication, and dutyfree-quota-free raise the tricky issue of rules of origin; there is a very real issue to be resolved here and concerns over circumvention must be addressed. Cotton also falls into the highly desirable category. Political realities in the US may still prove to be an insuperable obstacle in 2011, although it may be possible to grapple with these at a later date with a new US Farm Bill and especially if the Round as a whole is concluded. Agreement on a monitoring mechanism for special and differential treatment would be useful. Though perhaps not in itself a major achievement, this would constitute a welcome confirmation that the development component of the Round is not sliding off the deck. Definitive implementation of the transparency/monitoring mechanism on regional trade agreements.
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This would be a strong signal that the WTO is developing its surveillance functions in this area. Considerable difficulties persist in the negotiations on fisheries subsidies. It seems highly unlikely that these could be resolved in time to deliver an agreement in December. One possibility may be to aim for a standstill arrangement so that existing levels of subsidies would not be increased pending an agreement. On trade and the environment, it should be possible to deliver on paragraphs 31(i) and (ii) of the Doha Ministerial Declaration the relationship between WTO rules and Multilateral Environmental Agreements including information exchange between the WTO and the Multilateral Environmental Agreements such as the Montreal Protocol. Desirable as it is, any agreement on reducing barriers to trade in environmental goods and services seems unlikely, since this is closely linked with negotiations on market access for industrial products. In trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), the register of Geographical Indications for wines and spirits might be doable in isolation but linkages to the extension of additional protection to other Geographical Indications and to agriculture may prove to be a major complication. Overall, there is a reasonable prospect of constructing a respectable package, especially if trade facilitation and export competition can be included.
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What to call the deliverables and what to do with the rest

Whether WTO members should have the gall to characterise any such agreements as early harvest is another question. In any case, the idea would be to activate the mechanism foreseen in the second sentence of paragraph 47 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration1. Even if the eventual list were modest, it would be a positive contribution and a sign that Doha has not sunk. As regards the remaining issues the great bulk of the Doha negotiations members should once again recommit themselves to completion of the agenda as soon as possible. In practice, that is likely to be when the global economic and political climate is more conducive. While this might provoke yawns in some quarters, it is preferable to other alternatives such as formal suspension or attempting a fundamental reconfiguration, which could result in a complete unravelling. One might recall Winston Churchills frequently uttered response to repeated adversity we must just keep buggering on (which he often shortened to the acronym KBO).
Moving the WTO forward while Doha is waiting for a high tide
Over the coming weeks and months, in my view, the WTO should not stop with a repairand-wait strategy. While the non-negotiating functions of the WTO usually described as dispute settlement and monitoring/surveillance are in reasonably good shape, they are not sufficient in current circumstances, especially given the state of the Round, to convince sceptical outsiders that the organisation is as functional as it should be. If in 2012 (and possibly 2013) Doha is going to assume a lower profile, the opportunity should be taken to exploit some of the other strengths of the WTO that have fallen out
Paragraph 47 reads: With the exception of the improvements and clarifications of the Dispute Settlement Understanding, the conduct, conclusion and entry into force of the outcome of the negotiations shall be treated as parts of a single undertaking. However, agreements reached at an early stage may be implemented on a provisional or a definitive basis. Early agreements shall be taken into account in assessing the overall balance of the negotiations.
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of the limelight in recent years. Members could, for example, agree to reinvigorate and give higher priority to the deliberations of the regular councils and committees. These bodies were relatively vibrant in the period 1995 to 2000. Some still are, but others are no longer being as fully exploited. This might also offer an avenue to answer, to some extent, critics who argue that the WTO is locked in an outdated agenda and not addressing new areas of concern. Why should some of these new issues not be discussed in the regular (non-negotiating) machinery? This is already beginning to happen to some extent for example the recent discussion in the working group on trade, debt and finance on the relationship between trade and exchange rates, and the agriculture committees discussions of food security. There are numerous other candidates for similar treatment, some controversial perhaps but others less so. Could relevant WTO bodies discuss some of the supplychain issues frequently mentioned by businessmen? That might offer a welcome means of reconnecting the WTO with the business community. The Trade Policies Review Mechanism might also be overhauled. What has happened to the work programme on e-commerce? Discussion of current issues in the regular machinery might in some cases lead nowhere. In others, it could lead to some strategic thinking about the future shape of the multilateral trading system and prepare the ground for further developments.
Conclusion
To summarise, it does not seem to be necessary to abandon the good ship Doha in order to start moving forward into as yet uncharted waters.
References
Singh Bhatia, Ujal (2011), Salvaging Doha, VoxEU.org, 10 May.
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About the author

Stuart Harbinson is Senior Trade Policy Adviser at Sidley Austin LLPs Geneva office. He joined Sidley Austin after gaining extensive trade policy experience in several high-level positions in the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and Hong Kong Government. When Permanent Representative of Hong Kong, China to the WTO, Mr. Harbinson chaired the General Council in 2001-2002, overseeing preparations for the Doha Ministerial Conference. He subsequently served as the first chairman of the agriculture negotiations. He was Chief of Staff to Director-General Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi from 2002 to 2005 and Special Adviser to Director-General Pascal Lamy from 2005 to 2007.
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Keeping the WTO on track: A Doha down payment plus more

Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett
Graduate Institute, Geneva and CEPR; University of St Gallen and CEPR
After 10 years of much progress and much frustration with the Doha Round, it is time to find a new approach to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion. This essay argues that success would require four things implemented simultaneously: i) a Doha down-payment package agreed this year, ii) an understanding of how to reorganise continuing talks on the most contentious issues, iii) commencement of a WTO work programme on 21st-century trade issues, and iv) a bold initiative by middle power WTO members to try to unblock the talks. World leaders are in a bind over the Doha Round. Carrying on with business as usual is no longer an option the impasse that has emerged cannot be solved with a few more negotiating sessions. Abandoning the Round has been ruled out by almost all WTO members, nor is there much appetite for suspending the Round. This quandary has trade ministers and diplomats casting around for creative solutions.
Getting the WTO past the Doha crisis

After talking with ambassadors and senior officials from a wide range of delegations in Geneva, and a few from national capitals, we pulled together the elements of a plan that might suggest a way forward. The plan has four dimensions.
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1.
What to do for the December 2011 ministerial meeting
While finishing Doha this year is impossible, the WTO could have something to show for its 10 years of work. This progress could be locked in. A small package or set of stand-alone agreements could be finalised this year what some call early harvest results and others call Doha deliverables, or the Doha down payment. The long-scheduled meeting of trade ministers for 15-17 December 2011 provides a natural focal point for finalising these results. Although these agreements would not constitute a major economic breakthrough, it would be a wise, political response to the Doha crisis. It would demonstrate that the WTO is alive, that it is forum where things can get done. The nature of the package is dictated primarily by practicality we can think of including only those items where agreement is already close. There would also be great merit, both politically and economically, to focusing on issues that benefit the worlds poorest countries. The failure of the largest trading nations to find a compromise that suits them shouldnt be allowed to hold up sensible progress for the least developed nations. The other essays in this eBook discuss the possible items that might be included in a Doha down payment. We have not been at the cutting face of the negotiations, so we cannot form an independent judgement of what is practical. Canvassing opinions in Geneva, however, the most likely items seem to be: An accord on duty-free, quota-free treatment for least developed nations; A waiver that allows WTO members to provide preferential access to services trade from least developed nations; An agreement to reduce distortions in cotton to the benefit of least developed nations.
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A package of measures that promote trade facilitation, i.e. reducing barriers to imports stemming from excessive red-tape barriers in customs, inferior port infrastructure, and other non-trade-policy impedances to trade; Agreement on a monitoring mechanism for special and differential treatment, Agreement to make permanent the RTA Transparency Mechanism that has been operating successfully for years; and An agreement on certain non-tariff barriers such as the Horizontal Mechanism and textile labelling. Other issues may ultimately prove tractable or necessary to provide balance. Those most often mentioned include a standstill agreement on fisheries subsidies, certain aspects of the less controversial rules negotiations, and export subsidies.
2.
What to do with the rest of the Doha agenda
The small package that might be ready for December 2011 would not solve the WTOs first order negotiating challenge. A vast range of economic interests are still counting on the Round to deliver major progress on market access for industrial goods, agricultural products, and services. If we are to maintain a semblance of cohesion among WTO members, there will have to be an agreement to continue negotiations on the core issues. But the principal negotiating processes used to date havent worked. Efforts by the Big 5 as they are sometimes called failed to find a compromise among themselves. There are many explanations for this failure, but one thing is clear not all trade-offs were explored. In particular, the process has this year fixated very much on trade-offs within industrial goods liberalisation (NAMA). Trade-offs with other areas (services, antidumping rules, and others) werent considered. This suggests that the December 2011 meeting could reorganise the process in a way that is more likely to bear fruit. Here are some elements that resonated with many WTO members with whom we spoke.
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Have a real negotiation under multilateral control with a conductor acting as an impartial player with responsibility of assisting members to reach agreement. This suggests that an essential question will be the choice of the conductor (more on this below). The negotiations must be horizontal. Except for some issues in particular areas where useful work can still be done regardless of results in other areas (fisheries subsidies, for example) the negotiations should be horizontal. All areas should be on the table without a priori sequencing. Thus a package can be built with trade-offs across the board. Forget modalities. The original sequencing of the talks known in WTO-ese as modalities has not worked.1 Perhaps this should have been obvious from the start, but now it is clear to all. No government can be expected to agree to formulae and other elements without knowing the full impact of such an understanding. For example, by common agreement, nations get to choose a limited number of products to exclude from tariff cutting. As nations know better where they themselves will apply the flexibility, we have a situation where nations know what they are conceding on tariffs, but they dont know what their exporters will be getting in exchange. Only when countries bring their national tariff schedules to the bargaining table will we know what the formulae will actually mean tariff line by tariff line the level that ultimately interests business. This is one of the things the December ministerial meeting could decide. It could set a date for the submission of schedules (for industrial goods, agricultural products, and services). This would unleash a process of real negotiations.
The idea that first there would be an agreement on the levels of ambition in agriculture and NAMA, with this conditioning discussions on sectorals and the remaining areas.
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These changes need to be made explicit. What momentum exists comes from a decade of negotiation groups working in silos. This momentum needs to be redirected by a ministerial decision. One part of this that would be critical to keeping the process in some sort of order would be to grant a sort of conductors role to the WTO DirectorGeneral in his role as chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee. It was a good idea to try to let the Big 5 find their way to an accord, but it did not work.
3.
Keeping the WTO relevant to 21st-century trade issues
Members should look beyond the 10-year-old Doha agenda and agree to a work program to begin a discussion and analysis (not necessarily a negotiation) of other issues relevant to todays economic relations. Some of these could be: Investment Trade and investment have long been linked, but internationalisation of supply chains has greatly strengthened the link. For most WTO members, a pro-trade policy requires a pro-foreign-investment policy. This has blurred the line between what is a trade policy and what is a domestic or investment policy. For example, during the global economics crisis, many countries set up protectionist measures on investment. Indeed, these went up even among members of the EU. The demand for mutually advantageous disciplines can be seen by the popularity of investment measures that are covered in 21st-century free trade agreements. Frequently these include investment chapters guaranteeing national treatment and most-favourednation treatment on a reciprocal basis. Competition policy Now more than ever there is a greater appreciation of the harm that exercising monopoly power can have on international trade and developing countries. Ask any developing country farmer who has had to bargain with large foreign supermarkets or has had to pay extortionate prices for its produce to be transported to the local port or airport.
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Access to foreign markets is impaired as well as the gains from globalisation compromised by anti-competitive practices. The spread of competition law enforcement around the globe has put in place one building block, now the challenge is to develop international collaboration between enforcement agencies to tackle specific cases of anti-competitive conduct. Climate change Attempts to arrive at multilateral agreements on climate-change policies failed last year. Nations are thus pursuing uncoordinated national policies aimed at climate-change mitigation and adoption. Taxes, subsidies, and regulations are part of these plans, and this brings them potentially into conflict with WTO rules that were designed without climate-linked policies in mind. WTO members could usefully address the question of whether the present rules are sufficient and/or appropriate to meet this 21st-century policy challenge. Is there a need to devise special disciplines and increase transparency? Is there a need to define acceptable limits or complementary policies? Export restrictions and duties Whether on food, raw materials, or other goods, the present disciplines are quite weak as the GATT/WTO rules were written in an era where imports (exports) were almost universally viewed as a political bad (good). Rules on export restrictions simply werent necessary. The 21st century, however, has witnessed frequent imposition of such measures. As these can lead to a classic prisoners dilemma, they are naturally suited for WTO-like disciplines that help maintain a win-win situation in the face of unilateral incentive to undermine cooperation. Just as with tariffs, the point would not be to ban such restrictions. They may be necessary and indeed useful in certain circumstances, but multilateral disciplines would be useful to prevent their application from leading to unintended consequences.
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Revisit some of the WTO Agreements The world of trade has changed radically since the WTO Agreements were struck in 1994. Some, such as the Agreement on Safeguards, could probably due with an updating. Enhanced transparency Current transparency practices could certainly be improved to the benefit of all. Now they are based on notifications by members with the result that they are very often incomplete and late. The suggestion here is to discuss ways of improving this, perhaps leveraging new information technology. Government Procurement Agreement Governments buy a very large slice of the worlds goods and services. Moreover, there is an increasing realisation that open procurement is beneficial to taxpayers by lowering costs and to consumers by boosting competition and quality. Indeed, procurement is frequently the subject of ambitious free trade agreements. All this suggests that revisiting the market access provisions of the Government Procurement Agreement in future negotiations might produce mutual gains for a wide range of WTO members. Institutional reform The Marrakesh Agreement, signed in 1994, was the last time the organisations structure was examined in its entirety. Since then, the world of trade has shifted radically most obviously in terms of the trade weight of some developing nations but also in terms of how the internationalisation of supply chains has blurred the distinction between trade policies and domestic policies. This suggests that a cooperative and construction evaluation might reveal improves that could attract widespread support.
4.
A bold initiative from the middle powers
This is a round where the biggest players failed to provide leadership. There may be many reasons for this, but the fact is not in dispute. The Big 5 gave up trying to work
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out a compromise (although at the last minute, the EU made an unsuccessful attempt to find an approach to bridge one of the gaps). This failure, perhaps reinforced by a lack of trust among the biggest players, created a vacuum. One idea that could help unblock the broader talks is a bold unilateral move by the middle trading powers. These WTO members have often been a source of terrific ideas in the past; this time around they might demonstrate their additional commitment to the multilateral trading system precisely when so many commentators and business interests appear to have discounted the WTO. Such a bold step could encourage other WTO members to follow suit, injecting a further liberalising dynamic. While middle powers cannot realistically expect much from holding out for bigger concessions, a simultaneous set of unilateral moves by this group could generate commercial opportunities that influential business lobbies would notice. Not to mention that a welcome injection of competitive pressure would keep producers and traders in the middle powers on their toes. The middle trading powers could, for example: Offer to bind their tariffs at the applied level, even if the application of a formula doesnt go below the bound level; Offer to bind 100% of tariff lines on NAMA. If a tariff line is unbound, bind at the applied level; Table improved offers on services that reflect unilateral liberalisation undertaken to date; Freeze all harmful fisheries subsidies and offer to reduce them by 10% in the first year provided a critical mass of members do the same; Offer some additional restraints on the use of flexibilities presently available in the Agriculture and NAMA draft modalities; Implement trade facilitation even before it becomes a legal obligation;
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Implement improvements in transparency obligations under the Antidumping and the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreements; Provide duty-free, quota-free treatment for 100% of products for least developed countries with flexible rules of origin; Offer tariff concessions on environmental goods.
Concluding remarks
After 10 years of much progress and frustration with the DDA programme, it is time for a new approach to bringing negotiations to a successful conclusion, doing so in a way that enhances the contemporary relevance of the WTO. Such an approach like the others described by contributors to this eBook imply that the current impasse is not inevitable. Here we have outlined a four-part approach, which WTO members could take up over the summer of 2011 and have tangible results to show for the WTO Ministerial Conference in December 2011. Such a Doha down payment would demonstrate that the WTO can deliver; it would build confidence. Work on many other items including the remaining elements of the DDA would go beyond that time. Should further momentum develop, no doubt other initiatives could be taken on board. Partly through action, partly through reflection a renewed WTO would emerge as this process unfolded over time.
About the authors

Richard Baldwin is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva since 1991, Policy Director of CEPR since 2006, and Editor-in-Chief of Vox since he founded it in June 2007. He was Co-managing Editor of the journal Economic Policy from 2000 to 2005, and Programme Director of CEPRs International Trade programme from 1991 to 2001. Before that he was a Senior Staff Economist for the Presidents Council of Economic Advisors in the Bush Administration (1990-1991), on
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leave from Columbia University Business School where he was Associate Professor. He did his PhD in economics at MIT with Paul Krugman. He was visiting professor at MIT in 2002/03 and has taught at universities in Italy, Germany and Norway. He has also worked as consultant for the numerous governments, the European Commission, OECD, World Bank, EFTA, and USAID. The author of numerous books and articles, his research interests include international trade, globalisation, regionalism, and European integration. He is a CEPR Research Fellow. Simon J. Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Co-Director of the CEPR Programme in International Trade and Regional Economics. Evenett taught previously at Oxford and Rutgers University, and served twice as a World Bank official. He was a nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington. He is Member of the High Level Group on Globalisation established by the French Trade Minister Christine LaGarde, Member of the Warwick Commission on the Future of the Multilateral Trading System After Doha, and was Member of the the Zedillo Committee on the Global Trade and Financial Architecture. In addition to his research into the determinants of international commercial flows, he is particularly interested in the relationships between international trade policy, national competition law and policy, and economic development. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
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The Doha Round confronts world leaders with a dilemma. Concluding the Round this year is impossible, but there is strong opposition to terminating the Round. There is also strong opposition to suspending the Round as suspension is widely seen as a roundabout means of killing it. This VoxEU eBook aims to inform options for resolving the dilemma by gathering the views of some of the worlds most experienced Doha experts. Contributors include former US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Indias former WTO Ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia, Chinas former WTO Ambassador Zenyu Sun, Canadas former WTO Ambassador John Weekes, and Hong Kongs former WTO Ambassador Stuart Harbinson all of whom spent years at the cutting face of Doha negotiations. They identify the 3 ways past the crisis:
Road 1: Declare failure and call for a period of reflection; Road 2: Buy time by suspending the Round; or Road 3: Think creatively about work-around solutions that avoid acrimony and lock in some of the progress to date.
The contributors disagree on the best way forward but all believe that Road 3 is the one worth trying first.
Centre for Economic Policy Research 77 Bastwick Street, London EC1V 3PZ Tel: +44 (0)20 7183 8801 Fax: +44 (0)20 7183 8820 Email: cepr@cepr.org www.cepr.org

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Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Edited by Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

The Doha dilemma: An introduction to the issues and possible solutions

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Next Steps: Saving the WTO from the Doha Round

Road 1: The pitfalls of declaring failure

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Road 2: The pitfalls of suspension

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Road 3: A small package followed by a big package

Choices to make on the small package

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Choices to make on the big package

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

The forward-looking agenda

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

There is no Plan B only Plan A: Towards completing Doha

The costs of not completing Doha

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

The Way Forward: No Plan B

Identifying stepping stones to a final Doha Round conclusion

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

About the author

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Acknowledge Dohas demise and move on to save the WTO

End Dohas stranglehold and build towards near-term wins

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

The small package possibility

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Getting past Doha

How might this be achieved?

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

About the author

Next Steps: Getting past the Doha Round crisis

The cost of a never-ending Doha Round

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Ideas for moving beyond the impasse

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

What the three tracks might contain

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

Track two: Items for further negotiation

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Track three: Looking ahead

Specifically, as specified in paragraphs 18 and 19 of the Doha Declaration.

Next Steps: Getting Past the Doha Round Crisis

About the author

Next Steps: Is an early harvest still possible?

Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

The need for progress and the difficult options

Early harvest as the way forward