NEO-MERCANTILISM IN THE DOHA ROUND: IS THE COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE PARADIGM STILL RELEVANT?

More and more, I am puzzled by the discourse of WTO negotiators in the Doha Round. The WTO is supposed to be a free trade organization, and until further notice, the ideological basis of free trade is the comparative advantage paradigm. As we know, this paradigm implies “sacrificing” the sectors where your are not strong comparatively to others countries and conversely specializing in those sectors where you are strong comparatively to other countries. It happens however that this logic does not reflect at all the logic of WTO negotiators in the Doha Round. Here is a sample of the kind of discourse we hear day and night in the WTO. According to Indian negotiator, Kamal Nath, asking developing countries to liberalize their trade in goods and services, is like asking them to pay for the reduction of agricultural subsidies in rich countries:

If to correct trade distortions, which should not be there in the first place, developing countries are asked to

that, then it won't work.

The mercantilist logic of this answer is clear since for Kamal Nath, liberalization of trade in a developing country is a kind of a payment one has to make for more access to the markets of rich countries. In the same vein, USTR Susan Schwab refuses the idea that any sector in the United States could lose anything at the end of the day, which is after all a banal consequence of the comparative advantage paradigm. According to Susan Schwab,

US sectors would end up as net winners, as it appears clearly in this interview excerpt.

DRAJEM: At the end of the day, are American commodity groups going to have to be net winners in order to put a deal together? Or can you trade off their interests for manufacturing access or service companies like banks and insurance companies? SCHWAB: Well, I think that, given the competitiveness

, Americans will be net winners.

In sum, I would say that WTO countries seem to believe in expanded trade, but more and more they dislike the comparative advantage paradigm, especially developing countries. Is there a way to explain this apparent paradox? How can we have such a thing as mercantilist negotiators aiming for expanded trade?