Life after Doha: reflections in the run up MC9

Abstract

The Doha Round continues to struggle on with its ultimate fate still largely uncertain. This paper, written as part of a broader initiative by the World Trade Institute (WTI), the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and Universitas Pelita Haparan (UPH) in the run up to the ninth WTO Ministerial Conference on Bali in December 2013, discusses how the multilateral trading system got to the current impasse and offers some preliminary thoughts on decoupling the fate of the WTO from that of what is now a largely moribund round of multilateral trade negotiations. This paper argues that the WTO is still the best organization the world has for tackling a number of increasingly pressing issues, and that despite the quagmire that the Doha Round has become, there still remains a number of important roles for the WTO to assume and to continue playing, not least of which being the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes compliance with international trade rules.