ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of recent global trade negotiations by chronicling the rocky road they have followed since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. The 1999 WTO conference, dubbed “the battle of Seattle,” interrupted the march toward globalization by questioning the distribution of its costs and benefits and by raising doubts concerning the legitimacy of the WTO itself. Whether Seattle will prove to have been a decisive turning point is not yet clear. The outcome of 2001's WTO ministerial in Doha, Qatar, hinted that it represented more a temporary hiatus than a permanent change of direction. However, the stunning lack of progress in the run-up to the 2003 ministerial in Cancún, Mexico, suggests that without a more fundamental alteration of orientation the WTO risks a descent into illegitimacy and irrelevance. A detailed look at the negotiating positions of various nations and groups, each designed to achieve its own interests, reveals little cause for optimism that the deadlock can be easily broken.
