Academic

Can it be true that the Doha Round is dead?  Or is this just yet another "I really mean it, we are totally doomed" failure before the deal gets done?  The Times appears to have gone, hook, line, and sinker for the "Doha is dead" take, and it may be right (note also the WaPo's Trade Talks Crumble.

Trade rounds have never failed in the end, so the failure - and there was lots of trumpeting that this would be the big week for a breakthrough - of the last and final (for now) effort to save Doha is big.  But let's step back and think about how big:

• tariffs on goods are at zero or so, and that won't change.
• this round was supposed to be about helping out the developing world (though really it was about taking down the farmers in the EU, Japan and US, in the name of helping out the developing world), and the developing world comprises a minute proportion of global trade.
• others know more than I, but if you want one takeaway on why things failed, it is this: the developing world wanted more agricultural concessions (i.e., fewer barriers, but maybe most of all fewer subsidies, which have always been sorta okay under the GATT and WTO) than the US and EU were willing to give, and if they were willing to give on services (ie, letting American banks and lawyers operate more freely abroad), it just didn't turn out to be a priority.
• my view: if you aren't going to get serious about services, this was the least important trade round ever.  Its failure isn't quite the crisis that it may be portrayed to be.
• you won't feel that way if you find first world farm support annoying, though.
• everyone loves free trade, and China and India basically enjoy it.  But if you want to conclude that the failure of Doha would mean that we are entering an era of unfree trade (not true, in my view), then the continued rapid growth of the big Asian countries will be an interesting comment on the relationship between trade and development.