Time to kill off Doha

[CHIMO]

Monday 30 November marks the 10th anniversary of the Battle in Seattle, the day in 1999 when 100,000 protesters took to the streets and prevented the World Trade Organisation from launching its millennium round of free trade talks. The WTO is marking the occasion with another ministerial summit, and is understandably nervous – not because it fears another spectacular uprising (the summit is being held in genteel Geneva) but because the future of the WTO as a credible institution once again hangs in the balance.

Foiled in Seattle, the WTO did eventually manage to launch its new round of trade negotiations in Doha two years later. A barrage of threats and blandishments overcame developing country resistance to the idea of starting another round of trade liberalisation, at a time when many of their economies were still coming to terms with the problems caused by the previous Uruguay round of trade talks, which concluded in 1994.

Yet since then the talks have collapsed again and again. The EU and US have pressed hard for developing countries to open up their industrial and services sectors to foreign imports, while steadfastly refusing to reduce their own agricultural subsidies in real terms. Developing countries have banded together to fight off the worst of EU and US aggression, but have not managed to realise the mythical "development agenda" that they were promised.

Despite this, WTO director general Pascal Lamy is now calling for the conclusion of the Doha round on the grounds that it will help the poorest countries out of poverty. His new-found concern for the world's poor is certainly touching. When he was European trade commissioner, he made a name for himself by driving through EU corporate interests without the slightest care for the rights of poor countries or poor people. Nor has he done anything in his present job to suggest that he is on the side of the oppressed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/25/doha-round-trade-talks-wto

[DCKit]

1. "His new-found concern for the world's poor is certainly touching."

Just a little tongue-in-cheek there. Hah!