Doha Round Case

b) Explain briefly why Doha Round haven’t concluded until now

The Doha Round was officially launched at the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, WTO meeting in November 2001, when a Development Agenda was set in order to enhance the level of liberalization. The Doha Ministerial Declaration provided the mandate for the negotiations, including on agriculture, industry, services, telecommunication, digital technologies, finance, environmental goods and service and an intellectual property topic. Doha round aim is to achieve major reform of the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules.

The Doha round of trade talks was an attempted multilateral trade agreement, which is

In the ensuing years, while the negotiations at times showed signs of life, however for the most part expectations still remained low. Failure to achieve this ambitious agenda has undermined the credibility of the multilateral trading system and hurt the least-developed countries. So, what were the reasons for the failure of Doha round ?

The problems behind this collapse stems from a combination of internal complications as well as opposing external political and economic forces. Agriculture was at the center of the controversy when there is division between developed and developing countries on this issue.

Firstly, despite commitments made at Doha from member countries to remove export subsidies and domestic support, very little in the way of reductions had been made this area. The United States and European Union took a surprising joint stand on agriculture, and offered a proposal filled with vagaries that only limited removal of export subsidies to products deemed of particular interest to developing countries. Their stances were heavily opposed by China, India and Brazil, who over the course of negotiations persuaded other countries and formed a coalition of 21 countries, 31 submitting their own proposal for the complete elimination of all export subsidies for all products. The US and

After 2008, the Doha round was confronted due to the world financial crisis. In addition, the rapid changes that took place in the global economy which made the negotiation structure and the dichotomy between developed and developing countries obsolete.

Last but not least, there are also some important structural and procedural causes for the failure of the Doha Rounds negotiations. The regulation of international trade and business is one of the most complex sectors of the international law, especially concerning non-tariff trade barriers and domestic competition regulation. Moreover, the process of negotiations has become more and more complex because of the increasing number of members and the participation of many non-governmental organizations.

In conclusion, Doha Round negotiations haven’t concluded until now is due to many problems related to the very content of the negotiations especially on agricultural, but also timing and various structural and procedural causes, such as the tension between the political and the jurisdictional parts of the World Trade Organization or the configuration of the multilateral