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Kehoe and Whitten
economies. So why has nothing happened? One reason is genuine differences over whether the
interests of poor people are best served by lower tariffs or more special protection. But the
explanation lies chiefly in the failure of countries to face down their own powerful protectionist
lobbies, particularly farmers.”
And, then it came - the Doha collapse on July 24, 2006 (Economist Article, 2006a): “At last it is
official. After stumbling on for months, the Doha trade talks have collapsed. On July 24th, at the
end of yet another futile gathering of trade ministers in Geneva, Pascal Lamy, the World Trade
Organization’s director general, formally suspended the negotiations. He set no date for their
resumption. As Kamal Nath, India's trade minister put it, the Doha round ‘is definitely between
intensive care and the crematorium’.”
In another article, The Economist (Economist Article, 2006b) reduced the collapse to a single
sentence: “The Doha round of trade talks is in taters, because farm protection is still too
precious.” Kuttner (2006) attributed the collapse to “greedy U. S. and European farmers
influencing governments to refuse to cut subsidies.” Blustein (2006) announced: “So now its
official. Global trade talks are suspended, perhaps never to resume.”
REVIVING DOHA
Is the Doha Round never to resume? This arguably may be a reasonable conclusion, particularly
given that the Doha Round collapsed without setting a date for resumption. With 151 WTO
member nations, a collapse with no agreed resumption date means that first there must be a date
established for a meeting to talk about setting a meeting to set a resumption date. This likely may
be a difficult task, especially given that trade ministers walked out of the Doha Round’s
discussions without a date set to return. Hence, setting a date to talk about agreeing to a date for
resumption likely will be arduous and may require prolonged debate.
Lessons from the Collapse: Several months after the Doha Round’s collapse, WTO Director-
General Pascal Lamy began exercising his Director-General’s bully pulpit. He first commented
about what was learned from the collapse of Doha and cautioned about the cost of not resuming
negotiations. He noted (Lamy, 2006) “the suspension (of the Doha Round) has resulted in three
important developments: collective reflection on the cost of a failure; a series of calls for
resumption; and the beginnings, albeit tenuous, of a reassessment of negotiating positions. The
prospect of a failure of the negotiations, brandished rhetorically before July, is now seen by many
countries as a serious hypothesis, and the consequences of such a failure are now emerging more
clearly - not as a major economic shock that would precipitate any particular market crisis, or a
breakdown in trade or in the operating environment in the short-term, but rather as a slowly
developing disease that would progressively sap the strength of the multilateral trading system
built up over the past 50 years, damaging its economic lungs, its political heart, and its systemic
bone structure.”
Resumption Announced: Throughout the summer and fall after the collapse, the Director-
General made other impassionate pleas to resume the Doha Round. These pleas enabled a
favorable report to the WTO General Council on February 7, 2007 where Lamy (2007a)
announced, “we have resumed our negotiations fully across the board … political conditions are
now more favorable for the conclusion of the Round than they have been for a long time.”
Having revived the Doha Round in early February 2007, the Director-General (Lamy, 2007b),
continuing to use his bully pulpit, spoke optimistically about the potential for success in a mid-
March New Delhi speech: “Since February the negotiations have resumed in full mode in all
negotiating groups. Members are also working bilaterally, touching base and checking the impact
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