The conventional wisdom about trade rounds is that, like journalists writing stories or small investors filing taxes, trade negotiators only really begin to work properly as deadlines loom. But for the Doha round, the urgency induced by an ever-closing window of time is offset by the worsening political climate outside.

Missing the end-of-April target for the framework deal is bad news, though not fatal for the round. The real deadline for agreeing the substance of a deal is probably July, the start of the World Trade Organisation's summer break. Agreeing the core of a deal in July would just about accommodate the six months or so it takes to translate a deal into individual national commitments. It would then give the White House the three or four months needed to get it passed by the US Congress before the June 2007 expiry of "trade promotion authority" which allows the administration to submit trade deals to an all-or-nothing vote.