EGX kicks off week higher on August 17    EGP inches down vs. USD at Sunday's trading close    EGX launches 1st phone app    Egypt achieves record primary budget surplus of EGP 629bn despite sharp fall in Suez Canal revenues    Escalation in Gaza, West Bank as Israeli strikes continue amid mounting international criticism    Egypt recovers collection of ancient artefacts from Netherlands    Resumption of production at El Nasr marks strategic step towards localising automotive industry: El-Shimy    Egypt harvests 315,000 cubic metres of rainwater in Sinai as part of flash flood protection measures    Egypt, UNDP discuss outcomes of joint projects, future environmental cooperation    United Bank achieves EGP 1.51bn net profit in H1 2025, up 26.9% year-on-year    After Putin summit, Trump says peace deal is best way to end Ukraine war    Egypt, Namibia explore closer pharmaceutical cooperation    Jordan condemns Israeli PM remarks on 'Greater Israel'    Renowned Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim dies at 88    Egypt's FM discusses Gaza, bilateral ties in calls with Saudi, South African counterparts    Egypt prepares to tackle seasonal air pollution in Nile Delta    Al-Sisi says any party thinking Egypt will neglect water rights is 'completely mistaken'    Egyptian, Ugandan Presidents open business forum to boost trade    Egypt's Sisi, Uganda's Museveni discuss boosting ties    Egypt's Sisi warns against unilateral Nile measures, reaffirms Egypt's water security stance    Egypt, Colombia discuss medical support for Palestinians injured in Gaza    Egypt, Huawei explore healthcare digital transformation cooperation    Egypt's Sisi, Sudan's Idris discuss strategic ties, stability    Egypt's govt. issues licensing controls for used cooking oil activities    Egypt to inaugurate Grand Egyptian Museum on 1 November    Egypt's Sisi: Egypt is gateway for aid to Gaza, not displacement    Greco-Roman rock-cut tombs unearthed in Egypt's Aswan    Egypt reveals heritage e-training portal    Sisi launches new support initiative for families of war, terrorism victims    Egypt expands e-ticketing to 110 heritage sites, adds self-service kiosks at Saqqara    Palm Hills Squash Open debuts with 48 international stars, $250,000 prize pool    On Sport to broadcast Pan Arab Golf Championship for Juniors and Ladies in Egypt    Golf Festival in Cairo to mark Arab Golf Federation's 50th anniversary    Germany among EU's priciest labour markets – official data    Paris Olympic gold '24 medals hit record value    A minute of silence for Egyptian sports    Russia says it's in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban    It's a bit frustrating to draw at home: Real Madrid keeper after Villarreal game    Shoukry reviews with Guterres Egypt's efforts to achieve SDGs, promote human rights    Sudan says countries must cooperate on vaccines    Johnson & Johnson: Second shot boosts antibodies and protection against COVID-19    Egypt to tax bloggers, YouTubers    Egypt's FM asserts importance of stability in Libya, holding elections as scheduled    We mustn't lose touch: Muller after Bayern win in Bundesliga    Egypt records 36 new deaths from Covid-19, highest since mid June    Egypt sells $3 bln US-dollar dominated eurobonds    Gamal Hanafy's ceramic exhibition at Gezira Arts Centre is a must go    Italian Institute Director Davide Scalmani presents activities of the Cairo Institute for ITALIANA.IT platform    







Thank you for reporting!
This image will be automatically disabled when it gets reported by several people.



The Doha Round's premature obituary
Published in Daily News Egypt on 29 - 04 - 2011

NEW YORK: The Doha Round, the first multilateral trade negotiation conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, is at a critical stage. Now in their 10th year, with much negotiation, the talks need a final political nudge, lest Doha — and hence the WTO — disappear from the world's radar screen.
Indeed, the danger is already real: when I was in Geneva a year ago and staying at the upscale Mandarin Oriental, I asked the concierge how far away the WTO was. He looked at me and asked: “Is the World Trade Organization a travel agency?”
The threat of irrelevance is understood by leading statesmen, who have committed themselves to putting their shoulders to the wheel. British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono have unequivocally endorsed the recommendation of the High-level Expert Group on Trade, which Peter Sutherland and I co-chair, that we ought to abandon the Doha Round if it is not concluded by the end of this year.
Our idea was that, just as the prospect of an imminent hanging concentrates the mind, the deadline and prospective death of the Doha Round would galvanize the world's statesmen behind completing the last mile of the marathon. (The analogy is all the more appropriate, given that WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, who has brilliantly kept the process going, is a marathon runner.)
But even as these efforts are gathering momentum, The Financial Times, which used to be a staunch supporter of multilateral free trade, dropped a cluster bomb on Doha, even congratulating itself that, in 2008 (when a ministerial meeting failed to reach closure), it “argued that leaders should admit the negotiations were dead.” But if skeptics forget Mark Twain's famous response to a mistaken obituary — “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” — were the negotiators who have continued to work since then akin to Gogol's “dead souls?”
The Financial Times recommends working out a Plan B here and now, which would sabotage the political efforts to conclude the Doha Round. Despite rhetorical bromides about requiring “ministers to unlearn ingrained habits and focus on substance, not rhetoric,” and about “business associations engaging with the granular detail of what companies want,” this proposed Plan B would strengthen the bilateral and regional trade initiatives that have diverted energy and attention from Doha and the WTO. The irony here is that the proliferation of such preferential trade agreements (PTAs) is usually justified by pointing to the lack of progress in concluding the Doha talks. Never have cause and effect been so dramatically reversed in arguments over trade policy.
It has become increasingly obvious that such PTAs are what I call “termites in the trading system.” Indeed, evidence is mounting that they foster harmful trade diversion by increasing discrimination against non-members through differential use of anti-dumping actions. Thus, recent work by the economists Tom Prusa and Robert Teh has produced convincing evidence that anti-dumping filings decrease by 33-55 percent within a PTA, whereas such filings increase against non-members by 10-30 percent.
More importantly, PTAs are used by hegemonic powers to foist on weaker trading partners demands unrelated to trade but desired by domestic lobbies, at times in a markedly asymmetric way. Thus, Peru saw its labor legislation virtually rewritten by United States Congressmen indebted to American unions before the US-Peru PTA was concluded.
Similarly, Claude Barfield has documented how Colombia has been intimidated into making it a crime (with prison terms of up to five years) to engage in acts that “undermine the right to organize and bargain collectively.” Colombia must also pass a law dictating prison terms for anyone who “offers a collective pact to non-union workers that is superior to terms for union workers.” Will the US administration start filing criminal charges against the governor of Wisconsin and the many other Republican leaders who are doing precisely what the Colombian government is being bullied into not doing?
Such overreach is typical of what goes on in hegemon-led PTAs, unlike at the WTO, where stronger countries like India (which asked the European Union to take all non-trade-related measures out of the proposed PTA) and Brazil cannot be so intimidated. The danger is that overreach will lead civil society and voters in democratic developing countries to react against self-serving displays of hegemonic might by jettisoning free trade itself, on the assumption that such openness is little more than neo-colonialism.
Jagdish Bhagwati is Professor of Economics and Law at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade (Oxford, 2009). This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).


Clic here to read the story from its source.