I seem to be practically the only person in the blogosphere who’s interested in this but the Doha round of trade talks have broken up without results:
The Doha round of global trade talks, now in its seventh year, broke up without agreement on Tuesday after nine days of tense negotiations.
Sharp divisions between the US, India and China about access to agricultural markets in the developing world could not be bridged and the talks came to a grinding halt, scuppering efforts by Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, to broker a compromise.
There are other sticking points besides that of liberalizing agricultural markets. As I’ve documented here previously the EU is pretty darned reluctant to lower their agricultural subsidies (which constitute a substantially higher proportion of their agricultural earnings than ours do of ours) and I doubt that the U. S. will eliminate its subsidies without market liberalization or equivalent moves from the Europeans. Generally speaking, I think the U. S. position on the issue of liberalization if right and on subsidies is wrong.
The top U. S. priority, intellectual property, hasn’t even made it onto the agenda. I think the U. S. position on this issue is doomed but seeing as how we’ve bet the farm on intellectual property we can hardly be expected to do anything else. Needless to say I disagree with the U. S. position on the issue.
Sen. Obama has spoken eloquently about the need for mending fences with our overseas allies although I suspect he doesn’t mean trade when he says this. I haven’t found anything on the senator’s web site on the subject nor any specific mention of the subject on his part. Add “How would you re-vitalize the Doha round of trade talks?” to my list of questions I wish he’d give specific answers to.
Although Sen. McCain speaks generally about trade liberalization, I haven’t found anything specific from him on this subject, either. Same question.
