An Urgent Time for Global Trade

"Failure would mean scrapping the results that we have accumulated at the negotiating table over the past five years, results that would make this round the most ambitious of all the rounds concluded over the past 50 years...In fact, these negotiations are already potentially worth two to three times more than the preceding negotiations."

He argued that a multilateral trading system is the least expensive insurance policy available to the world economy and that failure would send out a strong negative signal for he future of the world economy.

Compromise

Trade diplomats say that without a breakthrough in the coming month, the Doha round risks being put on hold for years.

"Who would bother with such cumbersome talks in future if they yielded so little this time around," The Economist read, citing Jeffrey Schott, of the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think-tank.

He argued that, even though the price of concessions in their public opinion views may be too high, the cost will have to be accepted in a compromise.

Numbers

The target for the upcoming WTO meetings is to reach a deal on the mathematics for cutting subsidies and customs duties.

Revealing true bottom lines and opportunities to ask “What if?” may help reach the template agreements or "modalities" in overcoming the red lines for the major players, said Lamy earlier this month in Tokyo.

"What if your trading partners moved more in this direction? What if they asked you to do more in that direction? What if you gained more market access for product x but less for product y? What if this type of agriculture subsidy was reduced more than that one?"