Trade, Development and Globalization by Syed Javed Maswood

Author:Syed Javed Maswood [Maswood, Syed Javed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135142230
Google: BVX7AAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-23T04:57:51+00:00

PART II

Developing countries, globalization and institutional reforms

6 Economic globalization and development

Introduction

The Doha Round was launched in 2001 following a WTO ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar. The ministers issued the Doha Declaration highlighting goals and ambitions for the inaugural round of the WTO and included a pledge to produce an agreement that was development friendly. However noble the stated objectives, the undertaking ultimately proved to be an unrealistic goal. Eight years after its scheduled completion in 2005, the DR remains in limbo with no agreement in sight. Expectation has given way to resignation and hope to despair. Of course, this was not the first time a trade round had proved difficult to complete in a timely manner. UR negotiations dragged on well beyond the scheduled end of the round but, in a non-confrontational bargaining environment, the US and EU were able to come to a last-minute agreement to shelve any overhaul of farm trade to the future. Developing-country members of the Cairns Group felt abandoned and betrayed but were powerless to prevent secretive US–EU deal-making on agriculture, the so-called Blair House agreement. By contrast, the DR was the first time negotiations had been held up by bitter disagreement between developed and developing countries and confrontational politics left no room for cozy backroom deals between the EU and the US. There is also no easily identifiable circuit-breaker to end the stalemate.

Even so, none of the key protagonists in the negotiations are prepared to openly admit failure because of a concern that they, according to Susan Schwab, would be ‘… blamed for the Doha Round’s collapse …’ (see http://www.cedia.eu/en/policy/2011/wto_faces_tough_channels.htm). But she cautioned that there was greater danger in maintaining a false pretense. According to her, the notion that a ‘… deal will somehow come together at long last is now a greater threat to the multilateral trading system than acknowledging the truth’. As a former United States Trade Representative, Schwab had the luxury of expressing her views openly but in April 2011 even WTO Director General Pascal Lamy was forced to vent his frustrations and declare that differences were ‘unbridgeable’. Intermittent efforts to complete the DR have continued but the best option might simply be to salvage the positives, paper over the differences and move forward. Abandoning the DR may be perceived as a betrayal of developing countries, following their heightened expectations in 2001 but expectations have progressively come down to the point that few expect much out of the DR, at least in farm trade liberalization.

The undead DR has scuttled hopes for a development friendly trade regime in the immediate future. The pattern of heightened expectations followed by frustrations has been repeated several times in the postwar period, as indeed it was even in the course of the DR. The early success, albeit partial and limited, of UNCTAD, for example, gave hope that a balanced trade regime that was fair also to developing countries was achievable. A bold move by the oil-producing countries to unilaterally quadruple the price of crude oil gave

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