Tag Archives: doha

Nothing to see here

Is there any point in con­tin­u­ing to puz­zle over trade pol­icy and agree­ments? Do they really make any dif­fer­ence to any­thing? It seems they’ve become too hard to put together; but does that mat­ter? Since about 2001, I’ve been writ­ing a weblog analysing inter­na­tional trade agree­ments, national trade poli­cies and the post-WWII “sys­tem” of gov­ern­ment …

February 16, 2012 – 1:27 pm | By pwg | Posted in Policy, Trade | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Necromancy and negotiation

Some things, like kings, cru­ci­fied gods and Nor­we­gian par­rots never die. The WTO’s Doha nego­ti­a­tion may be the lat­est can­di­date for mythic res­ur­rec­tion (I hope not). But for now, the elders of the church of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism over at VoxEU.org are prepar­ing for a bur­ial ser­vice that they expect to take place at the WTO’s planned …

May 31, 2011 – 9:12 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged | Comments (0)

Multilateral misalignment

Over at the Lowy Insti­tute, Michael Wes­ley has opened a debate on the mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism with a brief dys­pep­tic review, char­ac­ter­is­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism as the “cop­per wire” tech­nol­ogy of inter­na­tional rela­tions. Pro­fes­sor Nick Bis­ley from La Trobe joins the cho­rus and no doubt oth­ers will fol­low. I’ve been puz­zling about the short­com­ings of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism for some time. …

May 20, 2011 – 11:58 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Apocalypse post-Doha?

I’ve been in the Mid­dle East and Europe and am just catch­ing up with a few things: such as the pam­phlet pro­duced by Simon Evenett, Richard Bald­win and a host of illus­tri­ous cheer­lead­ers for the WTO enti­tled: “Why World Lead­ers Must Resist the False Promise of Another Doha Delay” The col­lec­tion of brief essays—prises de posi­tion …

May 18, 2011 – 11:39 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Let it go, Pascal

This week, in Geneva “[WTO Director-General Pas­cal] Lamy recently out­lined the next steps in the process, spec­i­fy­ing that the chairs of the var­i­ous nego­ti­at­ing groups would table doc­u­ments — which sources indi­cate could be in the form of reports or new text, depend­ing on the topic — on 21 April for mem­bers to reflect on …

April 15, 2011 – 11:25 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged | Comments (0)

The falling value of tariff bindings

The strongest argu­ment for com­plet­ing the WTO’s barely endur­ing Doha round of trade nego­ti­a­tions is that it will fur­ther nar­row the legal right of WTO mem­bers to adopt higher pro­tec­tive trade bar­ri­ers in the future. But that argu­ment doesn’t seem to sway any­one much: cer­tainly not busi­nesses who have largely lost inter­est in the WTO’s …

April 11, 2011 – 12:07 pm | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Huge gaps remain in WTO negotiations

Recent rounds of bilat­eral talks between the USA and China on open­ing both farm and non-farm prod­uct mar­kets as part of WTO’s long-delayed Doha Round have been incon­clu­sive for very famil­iar rea­sons: “[U]nfortunately, what we learned con­firmed our worst fears — that we would see no new mar­ket access on our major agri­cul­tural export inter­ests” …

March 31, 2011 – 10:53 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)