The World Trade Organisation (WTO), the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), is an international governmental organisation set up to help international trade flow more smoothly and predictably. It serves as a negotiating forum for lowering trade barriers and writing trade rules to prevent trade wars among countries and regions. The 10th Ministerial Conference of the WTO will be held from 15-18 December in Nairobi. It is expected that it will determine the fate of the now 14-year ongoing round of trade negotiations launched in November 2001 in Doha, known as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The DDA was then mandated to address core development issues faced by developing countries or so we were made to believe. As of this writing, with less than two weeks to go for the holding of the WTO conference, the negotiating states in Geneva have not yet reached the minimum level of critical mass for a possible final deal. What matters even more is that no signs of agreement appear on the horizon. In spite of the fact that the main components of an ultimate solution are available and known to all, the dispute revolves around the right mixture for the sealing of a consensual deal acceptable to all. The package required will not be devoid of a combination of concessions from all parties in the agricultural sector with its three modules dealing with: a) The removal of agricultural export subsidies; b) Tangible reduction of domestic subsidies in developed countries and their support for their farmers; c) Developed countries are to cut their high and escalating tariffs on food commodities and agricultural products, to allow for market access to developing countries' exports. In contrast, developed countries are calling developing countries to cut their tariffs on non-agricultural goods ie industrial products, known in the WTO jargon as NAMA as well as further liberalisation in the field of trade in services. In light of the experience gained under previous trade negotiations of the Uruguay Round, countries such as Brazil and India have demonstrated an extraordinary ability to manoeuvre so far. Brazil has no doubt succeeded in highlighting agricultural negotiations as the priority subject in the Doha Development Agenda. Furthermore, after having suffered great disappointment with the extent of liberalisation in agriculture in the Uruguay Round, Brazil has imposed sequencing in the negotiations in the sense that no concessions are to be negotiated in other areas prior to the assessment of the developed countries' offer in the vital field of agriculture. Brazil is holding to its firm position, even against its own countryman, Roberto Azvedo, the Brazilian WTO director general when he lately in an attempt to rescue the DDA called for recalibration of the ambitious results of the round to enable countries to reach a doable outcome. Azvedo had added: “We have to be prepared to leave our comfort zones.” Agriculture, trade in services and non-agricultural market access constitute together the core triangle of the ongoing negotiations which, if an equitable balance of concessions is agreed upon, will settle the fate of the round. Adding to that a few other topics expected to be included in the final deal, such as food security, the package of Duty-Free-Quota-Free market access for the least developed countries, and solving the cotton subsidy issue between the United States and the four African cotton producing countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali the so-called C-4), as these countries continue to argue that cotton subsidies caused world cotton prices to decline and reduced their export revenues. However, all these topics and the fate of the DDA and even the fate of the WTO itself will remain subject to potential concessions the United States and the European Union are ready to make on farm subsidies when the real horse-trading begins. While this is what is apparent from the ongoing multilateral trade negotiations, covert intentions are the tip of an iceberg. As much as these negotiations rotate on farm subsidies, they are targeting in a more subtle way the rightful aspirations of many developing countries to restructure global governance to adapt to changing world dynamics. After having gone through the stressful and comprehensive negotiations of the Uruguay Round and become an integral part of the multilateral trading system (bearing its burden equally and reaping its fruit), developing countries want to become rule-makers and not only rule-takers in a system serving primarily the developed countries' interests. After having acquired the necessary expertise and upgraded their production and intensified their competitiveness significantly in the international trading system, developing countries want to participate in the making of, and development of, international norms and regulations. Emerging countries realise that they are still living in the post-World War II system, whose rules were laid out solely by the United States. The United States continued clearly to control the system up until the Uruguay Round negotiations, which was ratified in the mid-1990s by the parliaments of the then GATT Contracting Parties. GATT was then replaced by the WTO with its overarching agreements and innovative standards targeting in essence the domestic legislation of member states. The trading system included for the first time topics such as trade in services, aspects of trade-related intellectual property rights, as well as trade-related investment measures, which developing countries desperately argued yet in vain were not part of the trading system. Trade is no longer regulated at the border through tariffs and non-tariff measures, but in new trade agreements and through adapting domestic legislation to the international commitments undertaken in the WTO. The Uruguay Round would have allowed, thus, the United States and the EU to change the trading system, which was then agreed upon by consensus as a single undertaking. Countries had no real choice but to accept the newly negotiated Uruguay package in its entirety, or not become members of the novel organisation and remain on the sidelines. Developing countries were strongly convinced then that they were agreeing on a nascent democratic and rule-based foundation with each country having one vote. However, these beliefs were quickly dissipated, as developing countries increasingly realised that the old power-based system had not disappeared and that the United States and its allies were still calling the shots. Emerging countries refused to comply. They recognise their right as well as the legitimacy of them joining the decision-making process. They also feel more than ever before that they are able to influence the course of events. In the 9th Ministerial Conference held in December 2013 in Bali, India was able to impose its position to subsidise its farmers to support public food stockholding and to subsidise the poor by providing them with low-priced grain and rice. To negotiate this issue was initially a taboo for the US, claiming India was reopening the Uruguay Round agreements. India, however, never conceded. Eventually, the United States acquiesced to grant India this exception pending a final, mutually accepted solution. Developing countries aim at more efficient global trade governance where they have sufficient voice to defend their citizens' interests. It is important to see how the WTO will cope with and adapt to the new world dynamics and whether it offers a suitable framework to set international norms and regulations to govern the new world trading system with the new power balance. Is it possible for emerging and developing countries to win in the end? Reaching a balanced settlement in Nairobi will increase their power and their ability to manoeuvre, as it will also mean outright success for the WTO and renewal of its essential negotiating role, which has been put in doubt with constantly extending rounds of trade negotiations to reach an unprecedented range of 14 years. If the Nairobi conference reaches a fair outcome, it will have succeeded in laying the groundwork for a renewed global governance structure with the active and balanced participation of members of the multilateral trading system. However, the United States stands with intransigence against any possible participation in the making of international rules, as it means opening the door to re-examining the post-World War II system in its entirety with its outdated institutions. Justified questions will be raised as to how these institutions continue to be managed, in spite of the dramatic changes in today's world economic system. The United States will not accept such an interrogation, where it and its allies continue to control, through a system of weighted voting, the decision-making process in the Bretton Woods system. It seems that the United States is already in the process of overlooking the role of the WTO that it helped establish in negotiating so-called mega-regional agreements. These agreements include the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is a regional free trade agreement between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is a free trade agreement being currently negotiated between the European Union and the United States. These two agreements combined cover over 80 per cent of world trade. If regional negotiations denote something, they are vivid proof that the negotiating parties are fed up with the push and pull within the WTO and they want to move forward in liberalisation and maximising their benefit from trade. The fear is, however, that these regional agreements become the cause of trade wars, thus undermining the role of the WTO in ensuring a smooth and functioning multilateral trading system. Ultimately, the question remains of who are the real winners and losers of paralysing the WTO as a negotiating forum, obstructing it from reaching satisfactory solutions to all. The writer is a professor of practice and director of the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center for American Studies and Research at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo.
