ABSTRACT
Each of the trade Rounds conducted since (and including) the Allies first negotiated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 has, at one point or another, been threatened with collapse, causing commentators to worry about the impact of a breakdown in the negotiations on the multilateral trading system (see Gardner, 1956; Kock, 1969; Evans, 1971; Winham, 1986). The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is no exception. The run-up to the launch of the Round was couched in terms of the damage to the global economy that might happen if the trade bicycle was allowed to stall; the commentary that followed the collapse of the Cancún ministerial meeting worried about the consequences of a breakdown in the negotiations and the resurgence of interest in bilateralism that could result thereafter (see Zoellick, 2003; Lamy, 2003); poor progress in the run-up to the Hong Kong ministerial led one seasoned commentator to argue that ‘[t]he Doha Round may … become the first major multilateral trade negotiation to fail …[and that] [s]uch an outcome could mark a historic reversal in the irregular but steady progress toward liberalising world trade over the past sixty years’ (Bergsten, 2005: 15–16); despite the modest agreement to move the DDA forward in Hong Kong, lacklustre progress in the wake of the meeting spawned familiar worries about the consequences to the health of the global economy should the DDA be allowed to falter (see Blair, 2006); and the collapse of the negotiations in July 2006 led The Economist to warn that ‘this week’s debacle [the breakdown of the talks] constitutes the biggest threat yet to the post-war trading system … If the wreck is terminal – and after a five-year stalemate, that seems likely – everyone will be poorer, perhaps gravely so’ (The Economist, 2006).
