ABSTRACT
Before the Doha Development Round (DDR) was launched in 2001 there were eight multilateral trade negotiating rounds. The general outcome in each was an example of collusion between the US and the EU, whether in terms of specific outcomes or on general principles to quarantine certain commodities from the liberalizing discipline of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The DDR, on the other hand, became a venue for North-South conflict. With a wide gap between the demands of each side and what the other was prepared to offer, deadlines to agree upon negotiating modalities on each of the key agenda items lapsed without any agreement. In September 2003, a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was convened in Cancun to review progress in the Round and, understandably enough, there was some pessimism that enough progress could be achieved at the meeting to move negotiations forward. But attempts by the EU to add the so-called Singapore issues to the agenda, against the wishes of the Group of Twenty (G20) developing countries, led to a collapse of the Cancun ministerial meeting.
