Doha Development Round

The Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which commenced in November 2001 under then director-general Mike Moore. Its objective was to lower trade barriers around the world, and thus increase global trade.

The Doha Agenda began with a ministerial-level meeting in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. The aim was to put less developed countries' priorities at heart. The needs of the developing countries were the core reasons for the meeting. The major factors discussed include trade facilitation, services, rules of origin and dispute settlement. Special and differential treatment for the developing countries were also discussed as a major concern. Subsequent ministerial meetings took place in Cancún, Mexico (2003), and Hong Kong (2005). Related negotiations took place in Paris, France (2005), Potsdam, Germany (2007), and Geneva, Switzerland (2004, 2006, 2008). Progress in negotiations stalled after the breakdown of the July 2008 negotiations. A report to the WTO General Council by Lamy in May 2012 advocated "small steps, gradually moving forward the parts of the Doha Round which were mature, and re-thinking those where greater differences remained." Adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration on 7 December 2013 for the first time successfully addressed bureaucratic barriers to commerce—a small part of the Doha Round agenda.

In 2015, the United States government called for an end to the Doha round, and by 2017 it was declared "dead" by numerous commentators, including the Financial Times. However, the World Trade Organization states that the 2015 Ministerial Meeting in Nairobi "agreed [that] a strong commitment remained among all members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues", and many issues "remain open".

Negotiations

Doha Round talks are overseen by the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), whose chair is the WTO’s director-general, currently Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The negotiations are being held in five working groups and in other existing bodies of the WTO. Selected topics under negotiation are discussed below in five groups: market access, development issues, WTO rules, trade facilitation and other issues.

The negotiations were intended to start at the ministerial conference of 1999 in Seattle, and be called the Millennium Round but, due to several different events including protest activity outside the conference (the so-called "Battle of Seattle"), the negotiations were never started. Due to the failure of the Millennium Round, it was decided that negotiations would not start again until the next ministerial conference in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.

Just months before the Doha ministerial, the United States had been attacked by terrorists on 11 September 2001. Some government officials called for greater political cohesion and saw the trade negotiations as a means toward that end. Some officials thought that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations could help a world economy weakened by recession and terrorism-related uncertainty. According to the WTO, the year 2001 showed "...the lowest growth in output in more than two decades," and world trade contracted that year. The intent of the round, according to its proponents, was to make trade rules fairer for developing countries. However, by 2008, critics were charging that the round would expand a system of trade rules which were bad for development and interfered excessively with countries' domestic "policy space".

The 2001 ministerial declaration established an official deadline for concluding negotiations for the Doha round on 1 January 2005.

Cancún, 2003

The 2003 Cancún talks—intended to forge concrete agreement on the Doha round objectives—collapsed after four days during which the members could not agree on a framework to continue negotiations. Low key talks continued since the ministerial meeting in Doha but progress was almost non-existent. This meeting was intended to create a framework for further negotiations.

The Cancún ministerial collapsed for several reasons. First, differences over the Singapore issues seemed incapable of resolution. The EU had retreated on few of its demands, but several developing countries refused any consideration of these issues at all. Second, it was questioned whether some countries had come to Cancún with a serious intention to negotiate. In the view of some observers, a few countries showed no flexibility in their positions and only repeated their demands rather than talk about trade-offs. Third, the wide difference between developing and developed countries across virtually all topics was a major obstacle. The US–EU agricultural proposal and that of the G20 developing nations, for example, show strikingly different approaches to special and differential treatment. Fourth, there was some criticism of procedure. Some claimed the agenda was too complicated. Also, Cancún ministerial chairman, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, was faulted for ending the meeting when he did, instead of trying to move the talks into areas where some progress could have been made. The failure to advance the round resulted in a serious loss of momentum and brought into question whether 1 January 2005 deadline would be met. This intervention was credited at the time with reviving

interest in the negotiations, and negotiations resumed in March 2004.

With these issues pushed aside, the negotiators in Geneva were able to concentrate on moving forward with the Doha Round. After intense negotiations in late July 2004, WTO members reached what has become known as the Framework Agreement(sometimes called the July Package), which provides broad guidelines for completing the Doha round negotiations. The agreement contains a 4-page declaration, with four annexes (A–D) covering agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, and trade facilitation, respectively. In addition, the agreement acknowledges the activities of other negotiating groups (such as those on rules, dispute settlement, and intellectual property) and exhorts them to fulfill their Doha round negotiating objectives. The agreement also abandoned the 1 January 2005 deadline for the negotiations and set December 2005 as the date for the 6th ministerial to be held in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, 2005

The Hong Kong Convention Center, which was the site of the [[WTO Ministerial Conference of 2005|Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference|right|thumb]]

The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference took place in Hong Kong, 13 to 18 December 2005. Although a flurry of negotiations took place in the fall of 2005, WTO director-general Pascal Lamy announced in November 2005 that a comprehensive agreement on modalities would not be forthcoming in Hong Kong, and that the talks would "take stock" of the negotiations and would try to reach agreements in negotiating sectors where convergence was reported.

The conference pushed back the expected completion of the round until the end of 2006. and congressional leaders decided not to renew this authority for President George W Bush.

Geneva, 2006

The July 2006 talks in Geneva failed to reach an agreement about reducing farming subsidies and lowering import taxes, and negotiations took months to resume. A successful outcome of the Doha round became increasingly unlikely, because the broad trade authority granted under the Trade Act of 2002 to President George W. Bush was due to expire in 2007. Any trade pact would then have to be approved by the Congress with the possibility of amendments, which would hinder the US negotiators and decrease the willingness of other countries to participate. Hong Kong offered to mediate the collapsed trade liberalisation talks. Director-general of Trade and Industry, Raymond Young, says the territory, which hosted the last round of Doha negotiations, has a "moral high-ground" on free trade that allows it to play the role of "honest broker".

Potsdam, 2007

In June 2007, negotiations within the Doha round broke down at a conference in Potsdam, as a major impasse occurred between the US, the EU, India and Brazil. The main disagreement was over opening up agricultural and industrial markets in various countries and how to cut rich nation farm subsidies.

Geneva, 2008

On 21 July 2008, negotiations started again at the WTO's HQ in Geneva on the Doha round but stalled after nine days of negotiations over the refusal to compromise over the special safeguard mechanism. "Developing country members receive special and differential treatment with respect to other members' safeguard measures, in the form of a de minimis import volume exemption. As users of safeguards, developing country members receive special and differential treatment with respect to applying their own such measures, with regard to permitted duration of extensions, and with respect to re-application of measures.

Negotiations had continued since the last conference in June 2007. Director-general Pascal Lamy said before the start of the conference that the odds of success were over 50%. Around 40 ministers attended the negotiations, which were only expected to last five days but instead lasted nine days. Kamal Nath, India's Commerce Minister, was absent from the first few days of the conference due to a vote of confidence being conducted in

India's Parliament. On the second day of the conference, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced that the US would cap its farm subsidies at $15 billion a year, from $18.2 billion in 2006. The proposal was on the condition that countries such as Brazil and India drop their objections to various aspects of the round. After one week of negotiations, many considered agreement to be 'within reach'. However, there were disagreements on issues including special protection for Chinese and Indian farmers and African and Caribbean banana imports to the EU. India and China's hard stance regarding tariffs and subsidies was severely criticized by the United States. In response, India's Commerce Minister said "I'm not risking the livelihood of millions of farmers."

The negotiations collapsed on 29 July over issues of agricultural trade between the United States, India, and China. In particular, there was insoluble disagreement between India and the United States over the special safeguard mechanism (SSM), a measure designed to protect poor farmers by allowing countries to impose a special tariff on certain agricultural goods in the event of an import surge or price fall.

Pascal Lamy said, "Members have simply not been able to bridge their differences." He also said that out of a to-do list of 20 topics, 18 had seen positions converge but the gaps could not narrow on the 19th—the special safeguard mechanism for developing countries. However, the United States, China and India could not agree on the threshold that would allow the mechanism to be used, with the United States arguing that the threshold had been set too low.

The European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson characterized the collapse as a "collective failure". On a more optimistic note, India's Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath, said "I would only urge the director-general to treat this [failure of talks] as a pause, not a breakdown, to keep on the table what is there." The United States and some European Union members blamed India for the failure of the talks. India claimed that its position (i.e. that the US was sacrificing the world's poor for US/European commercial interests) was supported by over 100 countries. Brazil, one of the founding members of the G-20, broke away from the position held by India. Then-European Commissioner for Trade Peter Mandelson said that India and China should not be blamed for the failure of the Doha round. In his view, the agriculture talks had been harmed by the five-year program of agricultural subsidies recently passed by the U.S. Congress, which he said was "one of the most reactionary farm bills in the history of the U.S.".

Buenos Aires, 2017

The 11th Ministerial Conference held in Buenos Aires failed to reach agreement both on specific issues and on the continuance of the Doha Round. [https://archive.uneca.org/stories/wto-ministerial-conference-failure-accentuates-need-cfta-says-eca%E2%80%99s-karingi].

Geneva, 2022 (MC12)

The 12th Ministerial Conference, deferred because of the COVID-19 pandemic, took place in Geneva and was co-hosted by Kazakhstan, from 12 to 17 June 2022. Proposals on special and differential treatment, "based on the Doha Ministerial Declaration" of 2001, were put forward at MC12. The Doha Round is still in place "on paper". The WTO recognised some continuity with Doha, referring to its Ministerial Declaration as "guiding the WTO's work on special and differential treatment since 2001".

Attempts to restore

In 2008, several countries called for negotiations to start again. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during his first term as president of Brazil, called several countries' leaders to urge them to renew negotiations. The director-general and chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee Pascal Lamy visited India to discuss possible solutions to the impasse. A mini-ministerial meeting held in India on 3 and 4 September 2008 pledged to complete the round by the end of 2010. The declaration at the end of the G20 summit of world leaders in London in 2009 included a pledge to complete the Doha round. Although a WTO ministerial conference scheduled in November 2009 would not be a negotiating session, there would be several opportunities in 2009 to discuss the progress. The WTO is involved in several events every year that provide opportunities to discuss and advance trade negotiations at a conceptual level.

In early 2010, Brazil and Lamy focused on the role of the United States in overcoming the deadlock. President Lula urged Barack Obama to end a trade dispute between Brazil and the US over cotton subsidies after the WTO gave Brazil the formal go-ahead in 2009 to impose sanctions on imports of over 100 US goods. Lamy highlighted the difficulty of obtaining agreement from the US without the presidential fast-track authority and biennial elections. One of the consequences of the economic crisis of 2008–2009 is the desire of political leaders to shelter their constituents from the increasingly competitive market experienced during market contractions. Lamy hoped that the drop in trade of 12% in 2009, quoted as the largest annual drop since the Second World War, could be countered by successful conclusion of the Doha round.

At the 2011 annual conference of the World Economic Forum in Davos, British prime minister David Cameron called for the Doha talks to conclude by the end of the year, saying that "We've been at this Doha round for far too long. It's frankly ridiculous that it has taken 10 years to do this deal." Peter Sutherland, a former WTO director-general, called for the talks to be concluded in December that year. That hope having failed to eventuate, Pascal Lamy "reported to the General Council on 1 May 2012 that on the Doha Round, 'my conversations over the past few weeks with ministers and delegations have provided me with a sense that members wish to continue to explore any opportunities to gain the necessary traction and make tangible progress soon'."

In December 2013, under new director-general Roberto Azevêdo, negotiations of the Ninth Ministerial Conference held in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia produced agreement on a "Bali Package", addressing a small portion of the Doha programme, Because of the controversial nature of reforming laws on intellectual property, trade in services and subsidising crops for Food Security, the talks focused on trade facilitation, which means lowering cross-border tariffs and other regulations which impede international trade. However, there was still some controversy over this, with Cuba threatening to oppose any deal which did not affect the US embargo on Cuba. The trade facilitation measures agreed in Bali could cut the cost of shipping goods around the world by more than 10%, by one estimate, raising global output by over $400 billion a year, with benefits flowing disproportionately to poorer countries. It was claimed that the Bali Package, if implemented in full, could boost the global economy by US$1 trillion and create 21 million new jobs.

Issues

Agriculture has become the lynchpin of the agenda for both developing and developed countries. Three other issues have been important. The first, now resolved, pertained to compulsory licensing of medicines and patent protection. A second deals with a review of provisions giving special and differential treatment to developing countries; a third addresses problems that developing countries are having in implementing current trade obligations. The first proposal in Qatar, in 2001, called for the end agreement to commit to "substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support."

As of 2013 the European Union (EU) and the developing countries, led by Brazil and India, asked the United States to make a more generous offer for reducing trade-distorting domestic support for agriculture. The United States has been insisting that the EU and the developing countries agree to make more substantial reductions in tariffs and to limit the number of import-sensitive and special products that would be exempt from cuts. Import-sensitive products are of most concern to developed countries like the EU, while developing countries are concerned with special products – those exempt from both tariff cuts and subsidy reductions because of development, food security, or livelihood considerations. Brazil has emphasized reductions in trade-distorting domestic subsidies, especially by the United States (some of which it successfully challenged in the WTO U.S.-Brazil cotton dispute), while India has insisted on a large number of special products that would not be exposed to wider market opening.

Duty-free and quota-free access (DFQFA) currently discussed covers 97% of tariff lines and if the US alone were to implement the initiative, it would potentially increase Least Developed Countries' (LDCs) exports by 10% (or $1bn). Many major trading powers already provide preferential access to LDCs through initiatives such as the Everything but Arms (EBA) initiative and the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

Implementation issues

Developing countries claim that they have had problems with the implementation of the agreements reached in the earlier Uruguay Round because of limited capacity or lack of technical assistance. They also claim that they have not realized certain benefits that they expected from the Round, such as increased access for their textiles and apparel in developed-country markets. They seek a clarification of language relating to their interests in existing agreements. A 2008 study by World Bank Lead Economist Kym Anderson found that global income could increase by more than $3000 billion per year, $2500 billion of which would go to the developing world. Others had been predicting more modest outcomes, e.g. world net welfare gains ranging from $84 billion to $287 billion by the year 2015. Pascal Lamy has conservatively estimated that the deal will bring an increase of $130 billion.

Several think tanks and public organizations assess that the conclusion of the trade round will result in a net gain. However, the restructuring and adjustment costs required to prevent the collapse of local industries, particularly in developing countries, is a global concern. For example, a late 2009 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the United Nations Development Programme and the Kenyan Institute for Research and Policy Analysis found that Kenya would see gains in its exports of flowers, tea, coffee and oil seeds. It would concurrently lose in the tobacco and grains markets, as well as manufacturing of textiles and footwear, machinery and equipment.

The Copenhagen Consensus, which evaluates solutions for global problems regarding the cost-benefit ratio, in 2008 ranked the DDA as the second-best investment for global welfare, after the provision of vitamin supplements to the world's 140 million malnourished children.

References

External links

World Trade Organization's official site on the Doha Round
WTO current news site
Ideas for Development- blog of heads of international development agencies including Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO, and Supachaï Panitchpakdi, former director-general, now secretary-general of UNCTAD.
The future of the Doha Round at European Parliament Library Briefing, 9 September 2011