BEIJING, July 30 (Chinese media) -- After days of grueling talks, the Doha Round global trade negotiations, now in its seventh year, collapsed again Tuesday in Geneva.
From hopes to animosity, from animosity to apathy, and now back to hopes, which are quickly fading away: the Doha Round has witnessed enough twists and turns with its repeated collapses since it was launched seven years ago.
What makes its stumble even more heartbreaking this time is not the painstaking efforts the ministers from some 35 major WTO members had made during nine sleepless days and nights, but a tragic fact: failure, it seems, has almost become a habit for the hapless Doha Round.
THIS TIME, WHO IS TO BLAME?
This time, the negotiations failed mainly due to the so-called SSM (special safeguard mechanism) measures, over which the United States and India were sharply divided, according to some delegates.
Some ministers expressed disbelief that the trade talks had foundered after coming so far only because of "a minor technical measure" to restrict imports.
"Someone coming from another planet would not believe that after the progress made, we would not be able to conclude a deal," Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters right after the talks broke down.
Though in many people's eyes the failure was caused by "an accident," analysts pointed out the profound conflict of interests between the developed nations and developing countries actually makes the result almost inevitable.
The SSM mechanism allows developing countries to raise farm tariffs if imports surge over 40 percent, but India and other developing countries said the threshold was too high for a developing country and insisted on 10 percent.
Their call, proposed to protect their millions of poor farmers from starvation, met with strong U.S. opposition.
Diplomats revealed that most major WTO members had agreed to compromise over the issue during the final stages of the negotiations, except for the United States, which directly led to the collapse of the talks.
The reason is obvious. The United States has to ensure its own agricultural products can flow into the markets of the developing nations smoothly.
However, the developing countries have learnt a good lesson from the current food crisis that they could only achieve food security through raising their own agricultural production.
On the other hand, the United States had always been reluctant during the talks to make further concessions over its trade-distorting farm subsidies. Faced with widespread pressure from other WTO members, it finally decided to limit the ceiling of farm subsidies to 14.5 billion U.S. dollars a year from the previous 17 billion dollars.
In fact, the actual farm subsidies the United States has currently allocated amount to only 7 billion U.S. dollars, less than half of the newly proposed ceilings, thanks to the surging global food prices.
The new ceilings, under which the United States doesn't actually have to cut a cents of its current farm subsidies, leave the country big room to raise its farm subsidies in the future instead.
That well explains why Indian Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath has accused the United States during the negotiations of giving no concern for the lives of the people in developing nations and hampering the process of negotiations for its own interests.
A FAILURE WITH A COST
The failure of the Doha Round could lead to a series of serious consequences as it adds to world economic uncertainties.
"This is a very painful failure and a real setback for the global economy when we really needed some good news," said Peter Mandelson, the European Union's trade commissioner, following the breakup of ministerial negotiations.
Tuesday's failure could mean that WTO members would not have enough time to conclude the trade talks within this year. It could even be put aside for several years due to elections and government changes in the United States, India and Brazil, analysts say.
They believed that, under such circumstances, trade protectionism may rear its head again worldwide, which would spark new bilateral or multilateral trade disputes.
What is even worse is that it may add more uncertainties to the world economy which is slowing down amid a global financial turmoil and rising inflation worldwide.
Several delegates Tuesday hoped to make further efforts to salvage the negotiating process in light of what had been achieved in trade talks so far. However, the momentum has ground to a halt for the moment.
"We will need to let the dust settle a bit, it's probably difficult to look too far into the future at this point," WTO chief Pascal Lamy said, "WTO members will need to have a sober look at if and how they bring the pieces back together."
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