With crucial deals made last weekend on how much to cut agricultural tariffs by, what can be considered a "tropical product" and on reductions to America's trade distorting domestic subsidies, a WTO deal looked imminent at one stage.
Which leads us to ironic. For once, the press cannot claim that European agriculture was the stumbling block.
What caused the breakdown was a disagreement between India and China with the USA over additional protection for developing countries against imports, this being particularly to do with the trade mechanism which triggers higher tariffs in the event of an 'import surge'.
The latest talks have collapsed, but Doha isn't necessarily dead and it certainly won't mean the end of world trade. Exchange of goods must carry on, but the absence of multilateral agreements means that more bilateral agreements are likely.


The latest set of talks on the Geneva World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Round collapsed on Tuesday. Significant progress had been made during the talks and the prospect of a deal on so-called 'modalities' for agriculture and industrial trade looked very likely.In the end however the breakdown can be attributed to an irreconcilable dispute over a specific issue, the safeguard measures to be applied by developing countries.

Reasons for the collapse

A key component of the talks on industrial and agricultural trade is the level of protection afforded to individual countries through tariffs (basically the price that an exporter has to pay for his product to enter a given market). The Doha round seeks to significantly reduce the maximum level of tariff protection that members can apply.
Both developed and developing countries currently have so-called "safeguard measures" that allow them to increase the rate of tariff in the event of import surges. The talks in Geneva collapsed ironically because developing countries insisted on maintaining protection for their own farmers against import surges – an approach which unfortunately the UK Government and the EU failed to adopt.
Contrary to the criticism of previous Doha Round failures, the EU and its farming sector cannot be blamed for the collapse this time. The reformed CAP did away with trade distorting EU farm support and was helpful to the European position throughout.
It has been pointed out that the talks did not deal with one of the most contentious issues, that of cotton, which may well have led to even greater difficulties between the US and some developing countries. In addition it is not certain what outcome may have emerged on the issue of Geographical Indications, seen as important for the European Union in order to protect products like Parmesan cheese.
However substantial progress that was being made during the talks in Geneva. After a slow start, a political breakthrough emerged amongst the seven leading negotiators (EU, US, India, China, Australia, Brazil and Japan). Ultimately this failed because of the dispute between the USA who wanted more market access to developing nations, and India and China who wanted to protect their farmers and food production.
It should be borne in mind that the Doha Round is not complete until a "single undertaking" is achieved and this means not just agreement on agriculture and industry by seven leading countries, but agreement on all aspects of trade by all 153 WTO members. In the meantime we continue to operate under the terms of the 1994 Uruguay Trade Agreement.

What happens next?

This is the big unknown. WTO Director General Pascal Lamy talked of needing to let the dust settle, but concluded that no-one has 'thrown in the towel'. India and the USA refused to be drawn into an acrimonious blame game at this stage.
As for a way forward, it is very difficult, politically, to see talks being resurrected at ministerial level for another two years or so, due to the political cycles of US and Indian elections, a new EU Trade Commissioner and so on.
One thing that there does appear to be some consensus on, is that the progress achieved on the different chapters in Geneva will be banked. i.e will be taken as agreed so that it does not need to be renegotiated at a future stage, much like the commitment by the EU and other countries to phase out export subsidies in the Hong Kong Ministerial in 2005 was taken as agreed. So WTO is an issue which the UFU will continue to have to deal with.
Implications for Northern Ireland Agriculture

The Doha Round would have opened up the EU market to greater competitive pressure. This would have undoubtedly posed huge challenges for some important sectors of our agriculture, beef, pig and poultrymeat in particular. We have avoided this and the prospect of our markets being undercut by cheap and inferior imports from other parts of the world.
We do however need to be careful because the failure could stimulate WTO members to pursue their own bilateral deals which may not afford the same level of multilateral rules protection of the WTO.
In addition the deal on the table would have disciplined US domestic support which would have inhibited the US from granting generous and trade distorting handouts to its farmers in hard times. Finally, just because things have stalled now, does not mean they will not return at some stage in the future.