The Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which commenced in November 2001 under then director-general Mike Moore. Its objective was to lower trade barriers around the world, and thus increase global trade.
The Doha Agenda began with a ministerial-level meeting in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. The aim was to put less developed countries' priorities at heart. The needs of the developing countries were the core reasons for the meeting. The major factors discussed include trade facilitation, services, rules of origin and dispute settlement. Special and differential treatment for the developing countries were also discussed as a major concern. Subsequent ministerial meetings took place in Cancún, Mexico (2003), and Hong Kong (2005). Related negotiations took place in Paris, France (2005), Potsdam, Germany (2007), and Geneva, Switzerland (2004, 2006, 2008). Progress in negotiations stalled after the breakdown of the July 2008 negotiations.
The most significant differences are between developed nations led by the European Union (EU), the United States (US), Canada, and Japan and the major developing countries led and represented mainly by India, Brazil, China, and South Africa. There is also considerable contention against and between the EU and the US over their maintenance of agricultural subsidies—seen to operate effectively as trade barriers. Since the breakdown of negotiations in 2008, there have been repeated attempts to revive the talks, so far without success. Intense negotiations, mostly between the US, China, and India, were held at the end of 2008 seeking agreement on negotiation modalities, an impasse which was not resolved. In April 2011, then director-general Pascal Lamy "asked members to think hard about 'the consequences of throwing away ten years of solid multilateral work'."Documents from the negotiating chairs, 21 April 2011 at WTO official website A report to the WTO General Council by Lamy in May 2012 advocated "small steps, gradually moving forward the parts of the Doha Round which were mature, and re-thinking those where greater differences remained."Report by the Chairman of the Trade Negotiations Committee News item at WTO official site, 2 May 2012 Adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration on 7 December 2013Bali Ministerial Declaration and decisions at WTO official website. Accessed 31 December 2013 for the first time successfully addressed bureaucratic barriers to commerce—a small part of the Doha Round agenda.
In 2015, the United States government called for an end to the Doha round, and by 2017 it was declared "dead" by numerous commentators, including the Financial Times. However, the World Trade Organization states that the 2015 Ministerial Meeting in Nairobi "agreed [that] a strong commitment remained among all members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues", and many issues "remain open".
Negotiations Doha Round talks are overseen by the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), whose chair is the WTO’s director-general, currently Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The negotiations are being held in five working groups and in other existing bodies of the WTO. Selected topics under negotiation are discussed below in five groups: market access, development issues, WTO rules, trade facilitation and other issues.
Before Doha Before the Doha ministerial, negotiations had already been under way on trade in agriculture and trade in services. These ongoing negotiations had been required under the last round of multilateral trade negotiations (the Uruguay Round, 1986–1994). However, some countries, including the United States, wanted to expand the agriculture and services talks to allow trade-offs and thus achieve greater trade liberalization.
The first WTO ministerial conference, which was held in Singapore in 1996, established permanent working groups on four issues: transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation (customs issues), trade and investment, and trade and competition. These became known as the Singapore issues. These issues were pushed at successive ministerials by the European Union, Japan and Korea, and opposed by most developing countries. Since no agreement was reached, the developed nations pushed that any new trade negotiations must include the mentioned issues.
The negotiations were intended to start at the ministerial conference of 1999 in Seattle, and be called the Millennium Round but, due to several different events including protest activity outside the conference (the so-called "Battle of Seattle"), the negotiations were never started. Due to the failure of the Millennium Round, it was decided that negotiations would not start again until the next ministerial conference in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.
Just months before the Doha ministerial, the United States had been attacked by terrorists on 11 September 2001. Some government officials called for greater political cohesion and saw the trade negotiations as a means toward that end. Some officials thought that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations could help a world economy weakened by recession and terrorism-related uncertainty. According to the WTO, the year 2001 showed "...the lowest growth in output in more than two decades," and world trade contracted that year.
Doha, 2001
The Doha round officially began in November 2001, committing all countries to negotiations opening agricultural and manufacturing markets, as well as trade-in-services (GATS) negotiations and expanded intellectual property regulation (TRIPS). John Tsang, then Hong Kong's Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology and chair of the 2005 Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, MC6, noted that the conference took place "in the aftermath of the 9/11 incident in the US", and set the conference's "ambitious" agenda within this context.Tsang, J., "Towards a Brighter Future in Trade and World Development", Hong Kong Industrialist, 2005/12, p. 27 The intent of the round, according to its proponents, was to make trade rules fairer for developing countries. However, by 2008, critics were charging that the round would expand a system of trade rules which were bad for development and interfered excessively with countries' domestic "policy space".E.g., "Statement By Civil Society Organisations on the WTO Negotiating Situation, and on Food And Financial Crises" Accra, 2008
The 2001 ministerial declaration established an official deadline for concluding negotiations for the Doha round on 1 January 2005.
Cancún, 2003
The 2003 Cancún talks—intended to forge concrete agreement on the Doha round objectives—collapsed after four days during which the members could not agree on a framework to continue negotiations. Low key talks continued since the ministerial meeting in Doha but progress was almost non-existent. This meeting was intended to create a framework for further negotiations.
The Cancún ministerial collapsed for several reasons. First, differences over the Singapore issues seemed incapable of resolution. The EU had retreated on few of its demands, but several developing countries refused any consideration of these issues at all. Second, it was questioned whether some countries had come to Cancún with a serious intention to negotiate. In the view of some observers, a few countries showed no flexibility in their positions and only repeated their demands rather than talk about trade-offs. Third, the wide difference between developing and developed countries across virtually all topics was a major obstacle. The US–EU agricultural proposal and that of the G20 developing nations, for example, show strikingly different approaches to special and differential treatment. Fourth, there was some criticism of procedure. Some claimed the agenda was too complicated. Also, Cancún ministerial chairman, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, was faulted for ending the meeting when he did, instead of trying to move the talks into areas where some progress could have been made.
The collapse seemed like a victory for the developing countries. The failure to advance the round resulted in a serious loss of momentum and brought into question whether 1 January 2005 deadline would be met. The North-South divide was most prominent on issues of agriculture. Developed countries' farm subsidies (both the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and the US government agro-subsidies) became a major sticking point. The developing countries were seen as finally having the confidence to reject a deal that they viewed as unfavorable. This is reflected by the new trade bloc of developing and industrialized nations: the G20. Since its creation, the G20 has had fluctuating membership, but is spearheaded by the G4 (the People's Republic of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa). While the G20 presumes to negotiate on behalf of all of the developing world, many of the poorest nations continue to have little influence over the emerging WTO proposals. In dispute resolution mechanism of the WTO regime, the collapse of the Doha Round talks at Cancun in September 2003 has been attributed to Subsidies in agriculture and agricultural domestic support policies of developed nations
Geneva, 2004 The aftermath of Cancún was one of standstill and stocktaking. Negotiations were suspended for the remainder of 2003. Starting in early 2004, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick pushed for the resumption of negotiations by offering a proposal that would focus on market access, including an elimination of agricultural export subsidies. He also said that the Singapore issues could progress by negotiating on trade facilitation, considering further action on government procurement, and possibly dropping investment and competition. This intervention was credited at the time with reviving interest in the negotiations, and negotiations resumed in March 2004.
In the months leading up to the talks in Geneva, the EU accepted the elimination of agricultural export subsidies "by date certain". The Singapore issues were moved off the Doha agenda. Compromise was also achieved over the negotiation of the Singapore issues as the EU and others decided. Developing countries too played an active part in negotiations this year, first by India and Brazil negotiating directly with the developed countries (as the so-called "non-party of five") on agriculture, and second by working toward acceptance of trade facilitation as a subject for negotiation.
With these issues pushed aside, the negotiators in Geneva were able to concentrate on moving forward with the Doha Round. After intense negotiations in late July 2004, WTO members reached what has become known as the Framework Agreement(sometimes called the July Package), which provides broad guidelines for completing the Doha round negotiations. The agreement contains a 4-page declaration, with four annexes (A–D) covering agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, and trade facilitation, respectively. In addition, the agreement acknowledges the activities of other negotiating groups (such as those on rules, dispute settlement, and intellectual property) and exhorts them to fulfill their Doha round negotiating objectives. The agreement also abandoned the 1 January 2005 deadline for the negotiations and set December 2005 as the date for the 6th ministerial to be held in Hong Kong.
Paris, 2005 Trade negotiators wanted to make tangible progress before the December 2005 WTO meeting in Hong Kong, and held a session of negotiations in Paris in May 2005.