The next World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting will be held in Hong Kong from December 13-18. This is a critical juncture for the WTO, because the Doha Development Round has been in trouble since the failure of the Cancun ministerial in 2003. Since then, negotiators have failed in their attempts to draft documents. Following recent meetings of the Five Interested Parties (FIPS) and a mini-ministerial meeting in Geneva in early November, Pascal Lamy, the Director-General of the WTO, said that members had not been able to bridge major differences and had to “recalibrate” their expectations for the Hong Kong ministerial conference. This is a far cry from the talk of “ambition” that we usually hear from the WTO chief.

No documents, no decisions

Ministerial meetings are where the WTO makes its most important decisions. But negotiators can’t make any decisions, without any draft documents to discuss. This calls the success of the Doha Development Round into question. Should we declare Doha dead? U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman and EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson were quick to downplay Hong Kong as just a step in a process that should be completed by the end of next year. Others called for a “proper” ministerial for sometime in April or June of 2006. This raises an important question: if Hong Kong isn’t a proper ministerial, what is it?

Business as usual

Two scenarios seem unlikely for the WTO in Hong Kong: a surprising “success” like the Doha meeting (2001), or a resounding failure like Seattle (1999) and Cancun (2003). It will not be a success because the development aspect of the current round has proven to be a farce. It may be called the Doha Development Round but it is business as usual for the WTO: rich countries promoting their pro-corporate agenda. Still, the December meeting will not end in a complete collapse because leaders will do everything in their power to avoid being embarrassed again.

Bullying is unlikely to work this time, so we could see a watered down face-saving declaration with little progress on the key issues of agriculture (AoA), services (GATS) and industrial tariffs (NAMA). The declaration would simply re-state the WTO’s quest for an “ambitious” agreement with platitudes thrown-in about the benefits of trade for developing countries.

As Kamal Nath, the Indian Minister for Commerce and Industry, recently observed:

Unfortunately, we find that discussions based on some proposals, including those made recently by some members, have led us on a single track of so-called ambition, and ambition alone. Ambition means different things to different countries. To some it means market access; to four-fifths of humanity it means development.

This face-saving approach will buy some time but will not change the fundamental contradictions of the WTO system and the Doha Development Round. Nothing about the content or the process of the current negotiations favour economic progress by poor countries. They are all about prying open new markets for large northern corporations.

— Jean-Yves LeFort, Trade Campaigner, The Council of Canadians