e90dc30346f86f380eca4419_pa751c.jpg Paul Lachine

The Bilateral Threat to Free Trade

The Doha Round of global trade talks appears to have died this year, almost without a whimper. While a small portion of the project may be saved, the essential reality is that this is a unique failure in the history of multilateral trade negotiations, which have transformed the global economy since World War II.

ISTANBUL – The Doha Round of global trade talks appears to have died this year, almost without a whimper. While a small portion of the project may be saved, the essential reality is that this is a unique failure in the history of multilateral trade negotiations, which have transformed the global economy since World War II.

Many of the seven previous rounds of negotiations – including the Uruguay Round, which resulted in the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) – took years to complete, but none died of neglect or disinterest. Today’s indifference is particularly, though not exclusively, evident in the United States. President Barack Obama was silent on the issue in his re-election campaign, and breathed scarcely a word about it in his first campaign, too. One wonders whether what is at stake is even fully understood in some capitals.

Successful multilateral trade negotiations have significantly shaped the world in which we live and have dramatically enhanced the lives of millions of people. Between 1960 and 1990, only one person in five lived in an economically open society; today, nine in ten do.

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