A lot of obituaries are written long before the subjects of them are dead: Newspapers want to make sure they have fact-checked articles and thoughtful commentaries ready to run as soon as famous people pass away.
This practice tries to ensure both accuracy and comprehensiveness, but occasionally it leads to minor blunders. When the New York Times printed an obituary of Ronald Reagan right after he died in 2004, it included a quote on Reagan’s legacy from a professor--a man who himself had died several years previously. Oops!
Earlier this week, as the World Trade Organization announced an indefinite suspension of trade talks, journalists on the trade beat filed their own versions of obituaries. The decision delivered “a potentially lethal blow to a deal,” wrote the Washington Post.
And that may be the case. Perhaps the Doha round really is kaput, or at least about to slip into a hibernation so long and deep that it won’t awaken from its slumber until well after President Bush retires from office. Kamal Nath, the trade minister for India, described the state of the talks as “between intensive care and the crematorium.”
As crazy as it may sound, I haven’t entirely lost hope. There is still a slight chance--very slight, like maybe 1 or 2 percent--that a worthwhile deal can be salvaged. Sometimes it takes a jolt like reading your own obituary for you to realize that reports of your death have been exaggerated. Just ask Mark Twain.
The benefits of free trade are simply too large to ignore. A recent report from the World Bank makes this clear. During the 1990s, countries that significantly lowered their trade barriers experienced per capita real income growth of 5 percent. Those that didn’t lower barriers very much saw their income grow by 1.4 percent.
That’s why the Doha round is so important: Free trade can continue to underwrite economic progress around the world, but only if we let it. And the best way of allowing trade to achieve its potential is through a multilateral agreement under the oversight of the WTO. That’s how everybody can win.
Right now, nobody’s a winner. WTO Director General Pascal Lamy may have put it best when he announced the suspension of talks: “There are no winners or losers,” he said. “Today, there are only losers.”
In earlier rounds, it was easier for everybody to win. Negotiators simply had to pluck the low-hanging fruit. International trade grew, and so did global prosperity.
Plenty of unpicked fruit remains on the tree, but it’s higher up and harder to reach. A lot of it involves farm products, which are politically sensitive just about everywhere.
Instead of breaking out the ladders and preparing to climb, too many negotiators have been pointing fingers. The United States says the developing countries need to open their markets to manufactured goods as well as some farm products. The developing countries say the United States needs to end its domestic subsidies (payments) to farmers. The only thing they can agree on, it seems, is that the Europeans need to do plenty of both.
The truth is that everybody needs to compromise rather than complain. And trade diplomats need to watch their words. I was especially disappointed to read how EU negotiator Peter Mandelson blamed the suspension exclusively on the United States, when he bemoaned its supposed refusal “to show any flexibility.” This was a gross and transparent attempt to appeal to Europe’s anti-American political peanut gallery.
Perhaps Mandelson needs one of those six-week vacations that well-off Europeans like to take each summer. Or perhaps a World Cup-style head butt would do the trick. Either way, he needs to be careful about uttering comments that threaten to extinguish whatever tiny flickers of life remain in the Doha round.
If the members of the WTO were to assemble this fall with a seriousness of purpose that they haven’t yet demonstrated, there would still be time to conclude a trade agreement before the United States Trade Promotion Authority expires and all hope really is lost.
One thing is certain: If I were a world leader whose obituary already had been drafted, I wouldn’t want it to say that global trade talks had died on my watch and I hadn’t done anything to revive them.
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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A lot of obituaries are written long before the subjects of them are dead: Newspapers want to make sure they have fact-checked articles and thoughtful commentaries ready to run as soon as famous people pass away. 
