Doha Talks Revisited Again.....

Interesting article on whether or not we truly need to get through another round of the DDA:

http://tax-news.com/features/TaxNews_Global_Trade__Do_We_Need_Doha__570572.html

ISSUE

Doha has honestly been deader than Bernie (of Weekend at Bernies fame). Too many differences of opinion, too little that has gotten done. It is the International trade equivalent of dating a movie star... I'm sure it would be really nice, and life would seem much easier, but the chances of it happening are slim to none and the unforeseen headaches that would accompany it would not be worth the trouble.

Nitty-Gritty

If you thought the Warsaw Pact or Roe v. Wade would be hot button issues... you have not read up on Doha. The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is a current trade negotiation structured by the WTO to reduce global tariffs and trade barriers. Negotiations first started in November of 2001... yup it has been almost 12 years,  with the last break down of talks occurring in 2008 over agricultural import issues. To put the Doha Round in perspective:

1) It was started 2 months after 9/11, 18 months after the US accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Kosovo, 3 years before the invention of Facebook. 

2) When talks broke down in 2008, the break down was so halting as to cause a separate round of talks about the meta of the talks themselves (talks about the procedures of the talks).

3) The break down in these talks "coincidentally"coincided with initiation of the the United States and 8 other countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA, Expansions of ASEAN, EU-South Korea FTA, etc.

To be fair, the DDA seemed like it faced an uphill battle. At the time talks had broken down, the Lisbon Treaty (forming the EU) had been signed but not sealed incurring transition period issues, among them the best direction for the EU in trade strategy. China's leadership was turning a blind eye to blatant IP infringement of EU and US technologies, the US was facing a huge change in leadership and The Great Recession.... the bottom line: all the big players had internal factors that made exploring a unified external position with regards to trade barriers a long shot.

Take-Away

President Obama's announcement of renewed trade negotiations between the US and EU at the G8 has caused speculation that Doha might yet actually be completed (for my analysis of the announcement, see this post). I am not very hopeful that Doha will ever be completed, and it seems like the big players in the world have just gone ahead and negotiated smaller agreements with each other, undercutting the urgency which would rekindle the Doha fire. reduced global tariffs, lightened embargoes and a World Unified customs classification system could increase the money in a exporters pocket ten-fold, but some of this is politics, some of this is protectionism, and not as much of it is common sense.
In the meantime, for those of you in the US reading this who would like a better perspective on recent EU FTA developments and the possibility of the G8 talks amounting to meaningful, translatable change for the common custom's brokerage, check this article out: EU perspective on FTA with the US.