THE FORMER chief of the World Trade Organisation has warned that the benefits of globalisation will be threatened if world leaders do not complete the long-delayed Doha trade round this year.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, an expert group co- chaired by Peter Sutherland, made the case for the adoption of a deadline to complete the talks before the end of 2011 because the US electoral cycle would prevent agreement in 2012.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and British prime minister David Cameron asked Mr Sutherland and Indian academic Prof Jagdish Bhagwati last November to formulate proposals to give fresh impetus to the Doha talks.
Publishing the Sutherland-Bhagwati report last night, both Dr Merkel and Mr Cameron backed the push to adopt a deadline for the completion of the talks.
The two leaders are concerned about the threat of protectionist tendencies in global markets as a result of the financial crisis and believe open markets act as an economic stimulus.
Mr Cameron said apathy and cynicism about the Doha round was one of the biggest problems in the stalemate. “It’s taken an Irishman and an Indian to write a report that has the powerful logic of a German but the passion for free trade of an Englishman, but it is a very good report,” he said.
Mr Sutherland said completion of the deal was crucial for all countries and for the credibility of the world’s rule-based economic system. “We need the impetus and dynamism of leadership,” he said.
“We’re in a situation where 10 years of effort. . . have brought very significant results but there is that little piece more which is required to bring about a concluded agreement.
“We basically believe . . . that all the major parties have a little bit more to offer and that little bit more will be enough to drive this to a satisfactory conclusion.
“The negotiators need the political cover provided by heads of government and it is vital therefore to demonstrate that multilateralism and multilateral institutions have a future even in a world that has changed fundamentally from the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions,” Mr Sutherland continued.
“The achievement of the creation of an organisation which has the adjudicating capacity and can make decisions in terms of the rights and wrongs of trade disputes without being blocked by one of the parties to it is a significant step in creating an attitude towards national sovereignty and interdependence which has been crucial to the positive benefits of globalisation. Those benefits we believe are now at risk.”
