There’s no getting around the fact that the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun were a big letdown.
I had gone down there last week hoping we would make some genuine progress for American farmers. By the time I got onboard my return flight, it was clear that trade negotiators had squandered a fantastic opportunity to make progress.
Yet it’s also a mistake to conclude that the cause of free trade suffered a lethal blow.
The harrowing headlines talked of “collapse.” That’s too pessimistic. What happened in Mexico was a temporary setback, not a permanent defeat.
I’ve always maintained that the timetable for the Doha round of trade talks, while laudable, was ambitious. It took nearly eight years to complete the Uruguay round. I didn’t see any good reasons why the current negotiations would be wrapped up in half that time.
Originally, it had been hoped that the Doha round would conclude by the end of 2004. Cancun made it clear that this won’t happen. We’re probably looking at a deal by the end of 2005 or 2006. This is an achievement delayed, not an achievement denied. Expectations were too high, and from now on they’ll be more realistic.
The developing countries that scuttled discussions in Mexico--the so-called G-21--seem to have taken a bizarre delight in what they’ve wrought. They apparently feel like they’ve flexed their muscles and sent the United States and the European Union a clear message that they won’t be ignored.
It’s true that they grabbed everybody’s attention, and their aggressive actions took a lot of folks by surprise.
Yet they are the biggest losers--and it won’t be long before they realize it themselves. The United States is still the world’s number-one market, and all of them desperately want access to it. By sabotaging the trade talks, they’ve kept themselves more isolated from reaching their goal.
Now these trade ministers will have to go back home and explain why they’ve come away empty handed. That won’t necessarily be an easy thing to do, because developing countries have the most to gain from global trade talks. The World Bank estimates that success in Cancun would have lifted 144 million people out of poverty by 2015.
The fundamental problem is that the G-21 countries went to Mexico seeking something for nothing. They demanded that the United States and Europe reduce farm subsidies--which the U.S. and E.U. are in fact willing to do.
But instead of offering to cut their own tariffs in return, they’ve decided to engage in moral posturing about what the “rich” countries supposedly owe the “poor” ones. This is no way to negotiate, of course, so the negotiating came to a halt and we all went home frustrated.
The developed world is ready and willing to make good and fair trade deals with the developing world. We routinely give them breaks--special exemptions, longer compliance times, and the like. We’ll keep on doing it, even with what happened in Mexico. And I’m convinced that we’ll eventually have a successful Doha round, even if it winds up taking a little longer than some people expected.
In the short term, the United States will engage in more bilateral and regional talks. Yet the biggest payoffs come from global agreements reached through multilateral discussions. We must continue to commit ourselves to the WTO, even as we strike deals with the likes of Chile and Singapore and pursue a Free Trade Area for North and South America.
WTO talks will in fact go on--outside the klieg lights of Cancun and the mainstream media and inside the conference rooms of Geneva, where they will inch along as skilled negotiators whittle away at the tariffs and subsidies that block free trade. There would have been plenty of work to do even if the Cancun talks had been hailed a remarkable success.
When you follow the WTO as closely as I do, it pays to have patience. Just remember - A tortoise can walk a long way in a year.
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There’s no getting around the fact that the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun were a big letdown. 
