Doha Round of WTO Agreements

Running head: POLITICAL SCIENCE
Doha Round of WTO Agreements
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1POLITICAL SCIENCE
The World Trade Organization is an exclusive international organization that explicitly
deals with the trade rules between different nations. At the core of the organization are the WTO
agreements which are negotiated and signed by the trading nations of the world and at the same
the agreements are ratified in their respective parliaments. The goal of the organization is to
ensure that the business transaction and world trade occur smoothly and as free as possible. The
WTO has 160 member countries and this represents 98 percent of global trade. The prime
decision making body is the Ministerial Conference, that meets once in 2 years and this meeting
bring all the WTO members together. The ministerial conference takes in to account all the
matters under the multilateral trade agreements (World Trade Organization 2018). This study is
based on why the Doha rounds of the WTO agreements stalled and what are the implications for
the least developed and the emerging countries.
In November 2001, the fourth ministerial conference took place in Doha, Qatar. The
WTO member had a consensus that they will initiate new negotiations. These negotiations are
based on working out the present issues and also to address the present agreements. The entire
package as a whole is called Doha development agenda (DDA). The negotiations took place in
the subsidiaries of and in the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC). These committees are either
regular committees and councils or councils they are specially formed negotiation groups. In the
Doha ministerial conference, the developing nations were complaining about the difficulties they
were facing with regard to the implementation of the WTO agreements. The new items that were
first mentioned in Doha are: multilateral environmental agreements, trade barriers on the
environmental goods and services, subsidies on fisheries. The prime objective of the Doha round
of negotiations under the aegis of World Trade Organization is the promotion of the free trade
(Bagwell and Staiger 2013). The four main focus areas were:

2POLITICAL SCIENCE
 Reduction of the antidumping laws- The WTO rules allow the member countries
to impose the antidumping duties on the products on the foreign countries which
are sold at a cheaper price in comparison to the prices at home and even below the
cost of production. This directly hampers the domestic products and significantly
harm the domestic business.
 Phasing out the subsidies- in the production of the agricultural products, subsidies
play a major role in bringing market distortions. The result of the agricultural
subsidies plays a major role in reducing the volume of the agricultural trade,
prices rise for the customers, and subsidies encourage the overproduction of
similar kind of agricultural products (because government is buying surplus from
the agricultural producers).
 The intellectual property should allow the poorer nations to have the health
protection provisions. Within the time limit of one year the rich countries must
comply with the rules. Whereas, for the poorer nations there is a grace period of
five years and ten years for the very poor nations.
 Reduction of the tariffs on industrial goods and services- for the year 2000, the
agricultural products had a tariff of 4.4 percent for Canada. For European Union it
is 4.5 percent, 4 percent for Japan, and 4.7 percent in United States. Similarly for
the agricultural products the average Tariffs rates were 22.9 percent in Canada.
For European Union it is 17.3 percent, 18.2 percent in Japan and 11 percent in
United States (Bagwell and Staiger 2011).
 E-commerce- Countries will not collect custom taxes or duties on the internet
services or products.