The WTO in Bali: What MC9 Means for the Doha Development Agenda and Why it Matters?

Abstract

The conclusion of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) ninth ministerial meeting-held in Bali 3-7 December 2013-is at one and the same time momentous, marginal, and business-as-usual. It is momentous because it marks the first multilateral agreement reached in the WTO since the organisation began operations on 1 January 1995; it is marginal because the deal reached will have only a limited impact on the global trading system; and it is business as usual because the Bali package will be of disproportionally greater value to the industrial states than to their developing and least developed counterparts. We examine what happened in Bali covering the principal issues at stake and the content of the outcome, what this means for the WTO and for the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and why it all matters. We argue that while the Bali ministerial is significant and the agreements reached important, the conclusion of the meeting and the package agreed represents only a limited movement forward in addressing the fundamental problems and inequities of the WTO system.

The WTO in Buenos Aires: The outcome and its significance for the future of the multilateral trading system

“…In pursuing answers to these questions, we suggest that while the meeting did not produce the kind of substantive deals that resulted from the two previous meetings in Bali (MC9, 2013—see Table ) and Nairobi (MC10, 2015) (Wilkinson, Hannah, & Scott, , )—and failed to attract the same kind of attention as a result—its outcomes were significant nonetheless. We contend that the agreement of a series of statements of intent by large subsets of members (including many developing countries) consolidates the move away from the single undertaking and multilateral deals binding all members that had been the intention of the Doha round, the basis upon which the previous Uruguay Round (1986–94) was concluded, and which had been a stated ambition of multilateral trade negotiations since at least the Tokyo round (see Wilkinson, ) but which has been gradually eroded over the course of the last three ministerial conferences.…”

“…While tensions between the Unites States and China are the most pronounced and attracted the large majority of column inches, for some time now the biggest impediment to securing trade deals has been the profound differences of opinion between the Unites States and India. It was this division that led to the “impasse” in the DDA in 2008 (Blustein, ), and it has been the predominant feature of recent ministerial conferences (Wilkinson et al., , ). What US actions in Buenos Aires do show, however, is that the era of US exceptionalism in trade is far from over, that WTO members are unable and unwilling to reach agreement in its absence, and the United States continues to set the pace in global trade.…”

The WTO in an Era of Preferential Trade Agreements: Thick and Thin Institutions in Global Trade Governance

“…Others challenge the view of trade liberalization as an end in itself and see the distribution of trade gains and benefits for smaller members as the WTO's overarching objective (Egger and Olarreaga, 2014;Wilkinson et al, 2014). In political terms, the WTO conditions not only the global, but also the domestic political environments in which trade policy decisions are made.…”

Conclusions: Emerging Powers in the wto – Beware the Glass Ceiling

“…What Narlikar and Tussie, and Singh and Gupta show in their papers is that one consequence of the growing involvement and elevation of emerging powers is that the Doha negotiations became contested and interspersed with protracted periods of deadlock. As Narlikar and Tussie observe, this political jostling resulted in an outcome at the WTO's December 2013 ministerial conference and a post-conference agreement in July 2014 that illustrated the new found 11 decision-making role of emerging powers generally and India in particular (see, also, Wilkinson, Hannah and Scott, 2014;Wilkinson, 2015).…”