The WTO in Nairobi: The Demise of the Doha Development Agenda and the Future of the Multilateral Trading System

Abstract

This article offers a full-length evaluation of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) decisive December 2015 Nairobi ministerial conference. It examines the dynamics of the meeting, the emergence of a new negotiating mode, and the contestations between key developing and developed members; it explores the substance of the deal negotiated; and it reflects on the future capacity of the WTO to serve as a means of securing trade gains for developing and least developed countries. Three arguments are advanced. First, the use of a new mode of negotiating brought participation and consensus into the core of the Nairobi talks, but it also resulted in an agreement that moves away from the pursuit of universal agreements to one wherein more narrowly focused piecemeal deals can be brokered. Second, the package of trade measures agreed continues an established pattern of asymmetrical trade deals that favour developed members over their developing and least developed counterparts. Third, Nairobi alters fundamentally the likely shape of future WTO deals with significant consequences for developing country trade gains. The likely result is that while Nairobi will energise the multilateral system it will do so in a way that is of questionable value to developing and least developed countries.

The Development Dimension: What to Do about Differential Treatment in Trade

“…This lack of consensus contributed much to the prolonged stalemate in multilateral trade negotiations and to the eventual demise of the ill-fated round at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2015. 50 The Doha Round was a huge missed opportunity for all WTO members, developed and developing countries alike. By failing to forge a consensus to fulfill the Doha Development Agenda, the WTO members also failed to make any progress on advancing development.…”

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.…”

Reforming WTO-Civil Society Engagement

“…This is unsurprising given the travails of the Doha negotiations and the decision to set the round aside at the organization's 10th ministerial conference in Nairobi in December 2015 (see Wilkinson et al, 2016). Yet, as WTO officials have been quick to remind us, behind the drama of the Doha round the non-negotiating aspects of the multilateral trading system have continued to function, and to do so well (see Azevêdo, 2015).…”