Memo to Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani and the platoon of other politicians who want to run for president in 2008: Put “Fix world trade” on your to-do list if elected.
Trade likely will be an early headache for the next president because of the recent suspension of the Doha round of trade talks, combined with the upcoming expiration of fast-track authority for a trade treaty.
The Doha talks, named after the Persian Gulf city where they started in 2001, have had a rollercoaster-like existence before the talks were formally suspended by the World Trade Organization on Monday. That might have been President Bush’s best chance to settle the provisions of a treaty.
The broad goal of the talks was multilateral lowering of trade barriers and agricultural subsidies so that developing nations could more easily sell goods to industrial counties, and so developed countries could sell more products to emerging economies.
The talks ended because the three main parties – the U.S., the European Union and a block of other countries, including big nations like China, India, Brazil, Japan and Australia – couldn’t agree on barriers and subsidies.
Agriculture was a major point of contention; everybody from the U.S. to Europe to developing countries seemed stuck on protecting their farm interests, even though the World Bank estimates that abolishing tariffs and subsidies could add $300 billion in growth to the world economy by 2015. Nearly two-thirds of that would come from farm reforms.
Negotiators are paying lip service to the idea that talks could resume, but don’t hold your breath.
Current U.S. law requires Congress to vote up or down on trade treaties – there’s no way to insert amendments that might help favored campaign contributors. But that law expires next year, and observers say there’s no way Doha can be revived in time to get a treaty to Congress before that fast-track law expires. Sending a contentious treaty to lawmakers who could pick apart every clause isn’t a formula for reforming world trade.
So for now, it’s likely that coddled French farmers and well-connected U.S. agribusiness companies will continue to prosper, while Third World farmers and Japanese and South Korean factories trying to export to developing nations will suffer.
But the potential global – and consumer – benefits of freer trade can’t be suppressed forever. The world may need a fresh crop of leaders and negotiators to achieve them.
