Doha Round, World Trade Organization

The Doha development round is the current trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO); it has proven to be a contentious round marked by stalled negotiations and disputes between the developed nations (the United States, Japan, and the European Union) and the BRIC-caliber developing nations like Brazil, India, and China.

The World Trade Organization commenced in 1995, succeeding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as the primary international trade organization. Nearly all world trade—about 95 percent of it—occurs between member nations of the WTO, of which there are 153 full members and 30 observers (many of whom seek future membership). Similar to [Page 135]the GATT, the WTO conducts its negotiations in rounds, moving trade liberalization forward from the previous round (at least in theory) while addressing concerns that have come up and adapting policies in response to new issues and the expanding membership. The GATT was primarily concerned with tariffs—the taxes levied by countries on products imported from foreign nations—which were the main barrier to international trade and which had often been used to promote weaker (or more expensive) domestic products at the expense of superior (or cheaper) foreign products. Beginning with the Tokyo Round of GATT (1973–79), nontariff trade barriers and trade concerns became topics of discussion, which was the first move toward the more generalized nature of the WTO. The next GATT round was the Uruguay Round (1986–93), which was the most ambitious round of negotiations, embracing a broad range of issues and resulting in the deepest reforms to international agricultural trade in history—as well as in the creation of the WTO, membership in which would require obligations above and beyond those covered by the GATT. GATT members ended the binding nature of the GATT as of December 31, 1995, having joined the WTO over the course of the year.

The GATT was a treaty, whereas the WTO is an international institution, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. However, it should not be confused with a policymaking organization or international legislature: It provides a forum for delegates of member-nations to discuss the trade agreements they will all agree to, but nothing is decided unilaterally, and the staff is primarily administrative and secretarial.

The Uruguay Round, the last round of GATT, essentially constituted the first round of the WTO, in that the WTO was created directly out of those discussions. The Doha Round is the first WTO round since its inception; it began in November 2001. The round was supposed to begin at the 1999 Ministerial Conference (a regular meeting of WTO delegates called ministers), held in Seattle, and would have been called the Millennium Round, but negotiations were postponed until the next Ministerial Conference in 2001 because of protests in the city. The WTO protests of late 1999 were the largest antiglobalism demonstrations in American history, with the “Battle of Seattle” involving tens of thousands of activists, ranging from those with labor concerns to conservative religious groups to college students to radical anarchists—not everyone opposed the WTO for the same reason. Though the numbers of protesters were inherently disruptive, they were primarily peaceful; media reports of violent demonstrations and Molotov cocktails thrown at police were erroneous, though the corrections were not reported as frequently as the errors. In any event, the two-year delay of the WTO's negotiations is considered a tangible victory by many of the protesters and their sympathizers.

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