In the news:
Impatience with the glacial pace of global free trade negotiations prompted calls this week for the Doha round to be smashed into smaller and more digestible mini-deals that could be agreed quickly.
At a World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva, ministers from both rich and poor countries expressed frustration at having to wait for an overall Doha deal to be wrapped up to benefit from some its least controversial elements.
In the journals:
Robert Wolfe, "The WTO Single Undertaking as Negotiating Technique and Constitutive Metaphor"
Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) proceed simultaneously, not sequentially, and all Members must accept all the results. I show that the so-called Single Undertaking is both a negotiation technique and a constitutive metaphor. It does not cause an outcome to negotiations, whether in a round or the daily life of the WTO, but it shapes the possibility of an outcome. The methodological innovation of the article is the use of counterfactual analysis to assess whether the Single Undertaking can be relaxed using concepts suggested by the various critiques. I consider rounds of negotiations, the consensus principle, diffuse reciprocity, critical mass decision making, the WTO acquis and special and differential treatment for developing countries. One aspect of integrative bargaining strategies, issue linkage, is also considered. The Single Undertaking emerged in the interaction structured by the regime, and the same process could lead to it being eliminated, but that is unlikely.
In conferences:
WTO Scholars Forum and the World Trade Law Association:
Are Doha and the Single Undertaking Trade Round Model Dead?
Stefan Amarasinha, European Commission
Michael Johnson, Independent Advisor on International Trade Policy and
Former Co-ordinator of Trade Policy at the UK Department of Trade and
Industry
Tuesday 8 December 2009, 6 - 8pm
at World Trade Law Association, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
About this event:
GATT and WTO negotiations for trade liberalisation have always aimed at
comprehensive packages containing something for everyone. But in 1994
the Uruguay Round had to leave several topics over to be settled later.
It took 9/11 and the financial slump to launch the already watered-down
Doha Round which was further starved of substance and ambition in 2004
(and later). Despite this lack of ambition, the current Doha Agenda
negotiations have still fractured, and bilateral and regional trade
deals are proliferating. Does this mean that all-encompassing global
trade negotiations have become impossible? And what could emerge in
their place?
