Closing the gaps in the Doha round

The real gap lies not in the numerical differences on the pages of the negotiating texts but in the void between the texts themselves and the expression of political will by Ministers – a void that can only be filled by dialogue, a dialogue informed by having imagined other perspectives, not by expressions of will or rational calculations. [...] While there have been numerous developments in the last decade that have contributed to undermining the dominant role that the US has played in all previous rounds (most notably the emergence of the BRIC countries), the financial crisis and economic recession of the last year have dealt a serious blow to the credibility of the US as the staunchest advocate of liberalization. [...] The Scope of the Round Before the Round even began, there were pressures, coming from all sides, to expand the scope of the WTO agenda to much more than market access through the reduction of tariffs: First, from economists and business folk who appreciate the benefits of globalization came the call for further liberalization beyond the borders: with the advent of global supply chains and the rewa [...] In the international trade context, fairness should not be thought of in terms of equality of outcome or distributive justice (whereby the focus shifts to the impact of trade and the relative merits of the persons or countries involved). [...] To sketch this dialectic briefly, it starts from the thesis that the lot of the majority of the countries of the world is best understood in terms of past colonial injustices.