Doha Development Round Case Study

1. Introduction

The latest and the ninth round of multilateral trade negotiations among the world trade organization (WTO) is called the Doha Development Round. It was first launched in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The Doha Round directs the attention on the improvement of the trading possibilities for developing countries. In particular, the Doha Round claims to enable the liberalization on agriculture services, intellectual property rights and trade barriers with the purpose of expanding the global economic growth, development and opportunities. And after all the years of negotiations was it still unlikely to reach an agreement in the predictable future because of two main reasons. In the first place due to democratic reasons and secondly because all the simple conditions have already been made by GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). “But after fourteen years of wrangling, a

The emerging economies are having a forceful power of influence and are therefore an assertive force in the global economy. “For example, when China entered the WTO in 2001, no one expected it to become the world’s largest exporter in 2010; now, issues like China tariff profile or renminbi value have become of global interest giving China great influence during negotiations.” (Hufbauer, 2011). The Doha Development Round focused on the developing countries and wanted to accord great flexibility for the market-opening obligations. But on the contrary, the developed countries like the United States or the European Union were left behind. In order that the developing countries were gaining progressively influence while the developed countries were losing their power. Another issue was that the emerging economies would benefit generously from the open world markets although they are unwilling to open their own markets and to contribute new liberalization in manufactures and