History: The Roadmap to the Future: Doha Dead

The Doha round of trade talks designed to create a global pact to liberalize trade for the benefit of developing countries, born in the Qatari capital in 2001, has died. Its death knell was a disagreement between the United States on one hand, and China and India on the other.

The debate was over "special safeguard mechanisms," a method by which developing countries would be able to impose tariffs on imports if those imports have a heavily detrimental effect on the developing country's economy or security.

The United States held the view that China and India were asking for too low a level of imports necessary to trigger the mechanism. China and India held the view that the United States was asking for too large an amount of imports to be exported to their countries before the mechanism could be triggered. They could not agree on the level, and so Doha--which was already on shaky ground--basically collapsed.

LINKS

This outcome, the failure to conclude a worldwide trade agreement is bad. The developed world was prepared to reduce much of their subsidies to farmers, thus making things a little more fair to farmers in poor countries who would have difficulty competing with developed-world farmers even without those farmers being handed money with which to produce more farming products. They should have cut all unnecessary subsidies altogether, but at least they were willing to do that.

Developing countries, particularly China and India, should have done more to permit an opening of their markets to services from the developed world. In China's case, they should have opened up to the manufacturing and industrial sectors, too.

While globalization has definitely not been perfect, and many people have lost their jobs to overseas workers willing to do the same work for less pay, globalization has also been responsible for the developing world, notably China, being able to drag hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and bring their countries closer to 'developed' status. For the developed world, it has brought cheap and affordable products that even the poor could buy, and thus increased the standard of living in advanced countries.

Africa, the least developed inhabited continent, will still have a huge market (the developing and developed worlds) for the continent's raw commodities. However, Doha held the hope that African farmers would be able to sell more to other countries, and therefore be given more incentive to develop and advance their agriculture, which would then cause African farmers to produce enough food for their own countries, foreigners, provide more jobs to unemployed Africans, and help Africa develop. Starvation and underdevelopment and even war could have been averted in Africa if Africans could have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the Doha pact. Additionally, Doha could have also helped Africa cultivate its industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors.

The United States has not won by the death of Doha. Neither has India or China.

They, and the world, have all lost.