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ARTICLE · 01 JUNE 2011

Getting Past The Doha Round Crisis: Moving Forward In The WTO

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The Doha Round is stuck. This essay argues that finishing Doha would be best, but if this is impossible, we should admit it and move on.

CanadaInternational Law
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Originally Published by VoxEU.org online.

The Doha Round is stuck. This essay argues that finishing Doha would be best, but if this is impossible, we should admit it and move on. Investing more resources and credibility in a failure would only damage the WTO and multilateral cooperation. Leaders should turn their energies towards building an agenda for the WTO's future work that responds to 21st century interests. Getting this right is critical; the WTO cannot afford another failure if Doha dies. An early harvest is an excellent idea, but only if it can be done quickly.

Bringing the Doha negotiations to a successful conclusion is by far the best course of action. The valuable contribution that such a development would make to strengthen the trading system has been examined at length elsewhere. No single achievement would be more valuable than binding in the WTO rulebook the current level of trade protection maintained by its members in all three areas of market

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