Everybody knows what a deadline is: The expiration of a time limit, when an assignment or a payment comes due. The first time the word “deadline” was used in this sense was in 1920, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
But there’s an older version of the word “deadline,” which is more literal than figurative. A “deadline,” during the Civil War, was a line drawn around a military prison; prisoners who stepped beyond it were liable to be shot.
The World Trade Organization is approaching a deadline of the first type: On June 30, negotiators are supposed to agree to a set of rules known as modalities that make further, more detailed discussion possible. These modalities, if they’re approved, will mark an important milestone on the way to an actual pact that lowers tariffs and expands trading opportunities around the globe.
Yet if our trade diplomats let June 30 slip by without result, they may find that they’ve crossed a deadline of the second type--a point of final termination, and failure.
It’s been nearly five years since the Doha round of the WTO began. Throughout this process, deadlines have been ignored repeatedly. But there are no legitimate excuses for missing more. There has been enough time. Everyone knows it: WTO Director General Pascal Lamy recently acknowledged that we’re “in the red zone.” And he didn’t stop there: “We are not far from the red part of this red zone. The timetable is a number of days, not weeks.”
This June 30 deadline is deadly serious for two simple reasons: First, in the United States, presidential Trade Promotion Authority will expire roughly one year from now. This is the necessary practice of allowing the executive branch to hammer out a trade agreement and then submit it to Congress for an up-or-down vote.
In the absence of TPA, members of Congress are all but certain to make changes in the wording of the agreement, some of them with the intention of scuttling it. No matter what the motive, however, revisions always require trade diplomats to go back to the drawing board, win approval for the changes, return to Congress again, and permit further meddling. It’s a vicious cycle that dooms ultimate agreement--a virtual death sentence for American participation in new trade agreements.
The second problem is one that compounds the first: Most of Europe goes on vacation in July and August. Americans love summer vacations, too, but for most of us it’s usually just a week or two away from work. For Europeans, it’s a month or two, and they view it as a sacred entitlement. Believe me, nothing will get done in Europe, starting very soon. If we blow much past the June 30 deadline, we’ll have to wait until September before it’s possible to achieve anything of substance.
And if we wait until September to determine modalities, reaching a final agreement begins to look next to impossible. Modalities, after all, are just a stepping stone--and even if we settle on them, there are still plenty of other stones that remain uncrossed. The last date for the Bush administration to file a trade deal for congressional approval, before the end of TPA in the summer of 2007, is next March.
Fortunately, we know what a successful trade agreement would look like: The United States must reduce farm supports, the developing world needs to allow more access to its markets, and the European Union needs to do some of both. The United States has put forward a serious proposal, the Europeans have offered one of their own that doesn’t go far enough, and the developing countries, led by Brazil, China, and India, seem to think that they don’t need to offer any concessions at all.
I’m trying to remain optimistic. If June 30 comes and goes, I’ll cross my fingers and hope that perhaps something will get done when the G8 meets in the middle of July.
At some point, however, we may to have to realize that we’ve missed a vital deadline--and that the Doha round really is dead, like a prisoner of war who has strayed too far past his boundary.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, while there’s still a little bit of time.
Dean Kleckner, an Iowa farmer and former President of the American Farm Bureau, chairs Truth About Trade and Technology (www.truthabouttrade.org). Mr. Kleckner was the only farmer to serve on the U.S. Advisory team during the GATT Uruguay Round.
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Everybody knows what a deadline is: The expiration of a time limit, when an assignment or a payment comes due. The first time the word “deadline” was used in this sense was in 1920, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
