With agricultural trade negotiations deadlocked, the Doha round of trade talks may appear dead in the water. But every round of trade talks in recent memory has oscillated between near breakthroughs and near breakdowns. Trade negotiations can be like a ride on a roller coaster but, while the roller coaster returns to where it started, multilateral trade negotiations have generally gone on to close successfully. Will this happen with the Doha round? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Prospects for concluding the round in Hong Kong next month, at the World Trade Organisation Ministerial meeting, are indeed bleak; but not the prospects for finishing later.

For a start, the history so far of the Doha round is more encouraging than conventionally believed. The initial attempt to launch the WTO’s first round of multilateral trade negotiations, at biennial ministerial talks in Seattle in November 1999, collapsed amid violent demonstrations. The round was finally launched in Doha, Qatar, two years later, as negotiators brilliantly exploited the tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US by arguing that the twin virtues of democracy and openness to the world economy would be re-affirmed by the launch of a WTO round.