1. What is a WTO trade round?

WTO (GATT) negotiations often process multilaterally by packages. That means, WTO members negotiate on several trade-related issues simultaneously in a certain period of time. The agreements, which constitute the WTO rules, are typically reached by consensus among all members. Such a period of negotiations forms a WTO trade round.
A new trade round is often launched when WTO members realize limits of existing rules in protecting their rights and facilitating trades. These limits may become apparent when new problems stem from the existing trade or when international trade develops into new areas. For example, the early GATT trade rounds dealt mainly with tariff reductions. Consequently, only few tariff barriers are left by the start of Tokyo Round. People then saw the influence of non-tariff barriers against trade and launched the Tokyo Round (1973-1979) to discuss non-tariff measures. Then with the development of trade into service and intellectual property rights, the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994 further included issues in services and intellectual property rights. Aware that GATT rules are limited to trade in goods, the Uruguay Round also covered the topic of WTO's creation. The current set of WTO rules was the outcome of Uruguay Round negotiations.

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of negotiation through trade round?

I. Advantages:

• The size of the package can mean more benefits because participants can seek and secure advantages across a wide range of issues.
• In a package, the ability to trade-off different issues can make agreement easier to reach because somewhere in the package there is something for everyone.
• Developing countries and other less powerful participants have a greater chance of influencing the multilateral system in a trade round than in bilateral relationships with major trading nations.

II. Disadvantages:
The simultaneous negotiation in different areas necessarily includes issues that certain negotiator countries are reluctant to address. These issues serve actually as conditions for the process of other issues beneficial to those countries. This situation can put the developing countries at a disadvantage. The developing ones are anxious to improve their economies through international trade. However, the prerequisites in human rights and environment protection often make it difficult for them to address the most urgent issues in economic growth.

3. A brief history of past trade rounds

Because tariff was widely used as a tool to protect domestic industries and generate revenue, the early trade rounds of GATT mainly focused on tariff issues. Main trade rounds include:

I. The First Round at Geneva, Switzerland, from April to October 1947, where the participants completed 123 negotiations and established 20 schedules containing the tariff reductions and bindings that became an integral part of GATT.

II. The Second Round at Annecy, France, from April to August 1949, which led to 5,000 tariff concession and the accession of ten more countries.

III. The Third Round at Torquay, England from September 1950 to April 1951, which lead to 8,700 tariff concessions and accession of four more countries.

IV. The Fourth Round at Geneva in May 1956, which led to some $2.5 billion worth of tariff reductions;

V. The Dillon Round from September 1960 to July 1962, which led to about 4,400 tariff concessions covering $4.9 billion of trade.

VI. The Kennedy Round from May 1964 to June 1967, which lead to concessions covering an estimated total value of trade of about $40 billion.

VII. The Tokyo Round from September 1973 to November 1979 was a transitional period, covering both tariff and non-tariff matters. In tariff issues, it talked about tariff reduction and bindings that covered more than $300 billion of trade in almost 5 years. It also resulted in a number of agreements in such non-tariff issues as subsidy, dumping, government procurement, technical barriers to trade, customs valuation, import licensing, civil aircraft, dairy and bovine meat.

VIII. The Uruguay Round from September 20, 1986 to April 15, 1994, further included tariffs and non-tariffs measures, rules, services, intellectual property, dispute settlement, textiles, and agriculture. At the conclusion of the Uruguay Round on April 15, 1994, GATT members signed the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO in Marrakesh, Morocco. This Agreement defines the scope, functions and structure of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

4. What are the traditional points of divergence between developing and developed WTO members?

All the WTO members participate in this multilateral trade system with the intention to enhance their own economy. The conflicts between developed and developing members result from difference in their development stages. Although developing countries far outnumber developed countries in WTO, developed countries still demonstrate superior bargaining power.

Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and environment issues are two main points of divergence between the developing and developed members of WTO.

TRIPs: As exports from developing countries come to yield trade surpluses, developed countries take an effort to further open the developing countries. They begin to seek stricter protection of their TRIPs. At present, over 90% of the world's patents are in the control of developed countries. However, most developing countries cannot afford patents and rely mainly on unauthorized copying of the TRIPs in their production.

Environmental Issues: Developed countries always pursue the "sustainable development" and implement bans and penalties on goods produced through environmentally harmful processes. However, cheap labor and natural resources are the only two resources for developing countries. As a result, developing countries view environment degradation as inevitable in their economic growth. They proposed that poverty is a greater problem than pollution. Since processing activities (usually undertaken by developed countries) do less harm to environment than extraction (usually undertaken by developing countries) while generating more profits, developing countries argue that the developed members should also pay the costs of environment pollution and subsidize the expense of undertaking environmentally sound technologies on the part of developing countries.

5. What is the WTO Ministerial Conference?

The WTO Ministerial Conference is the organization's highest-level decision-making body. As required by the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO, it meets at least once every two years and can make decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral agreements. Since the establishment of WTO, four ministerial conferences have been held. They are:

• The 1st WTO Ministerial Conference in Singapore, 9-13 December 1996.
• The 2nd WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland 18-20 May 1998.
• The 3rd WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Seattle, Washington State, US, 30 November - 3 December 1999.
• The 4th WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, 9 - 14 November 2001.

6. What is the "Seattle Collapse"? What led to the collapse?
In early December 1999, WTO trade ministers convened in Seattle for the third WTO Ministerial meeting. However, after a week marred by rancorous debate and violent street protests, they failed to fulfill the original intention of launching the ninth round of multilateral trade negotiations. This was a unique case in the GATT and WTO history that members failed to launch a new round. In addition, this failure has brought questions about the legitimacy of the trading system itself. (Scott, J.J.2000)

In people's impression, the Seattle Collapse may be caused by the street protects, which either claim for the priority of a certain group in WTO negotiations (e.g. environmental protection, human rights, and labor standards) or doubt completely the functions of WTO. Whereas, the real cause of collapse, the divisions between "North and South", "East and West", lay inside the convention center.

The North-South division means conflicts between developed and developing countries. In Seattle ministerial, the developed countries intended to take new negotiations at reducing the protectionism in developing countries and demanded to implement trade rules agreed in the Uruguay Round, such as the TRIPs and Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs). In contrast, the developing countries wanted to address the barriers in developed countries (e.g., in agriculture, apparel, and labor services) and revise the accords on TRIPs and TRIMs, in order to allow them more time to implement the complex new rules in these areas. In negotiations of services, each side put priorities in sectors of its own favor. The developing countries argued for reducing barriers in labor and maritime services, while the developed ones argued for such reduction in sectors like financial, air transport, information, and professional services.

The East-West division means the disagreement among the major developed countries. (Specifically, the United States, European Union, Japan, and Canada.) In agriculture, the United States claimed on deep cuts in farm subsides, while European Union and Japan resisted agricultural reforms. As to the antidumping rules, the European Union joined Canada to insist reforms in antidumping rules with the United States. At last, the contradiction of interests among these leading forces of WTO resulted in their failure to lead the process of reaching the declaration of launching a new trade round.

7. What are the major issues in the current trade round?

The fourth WTO ministerial conference in Doha from 9-14 November, 2001 has approved the WTO entry of China and Taipai and achieved the declaration of launching a 3-year long negotiation round. Unlike the Seattle conference, this conference paid attention to benefits of developing countries in the course of market liberalization. Among existing WTO agreements there are "special and differential treatment provisions" which give developing countries privileged rights and treatments. These special provisions include:

• longer time periods for implementing agreements and commitments,
• measures to increase trading opportunities for these countries,
• provisions requiring all WTO members to safeguard the trade interests of developing countries,
• financial and technical supports to help developing countries in handling disputes, implementing technical standards, and building the infrastructure for WTO programs.

There is strong text in the Doha Ministerial Declaration that the special and differential treatment provisions shall be an integral part of all elements of the negotiations. The new trade round will contain the following major issues:
I. Agriculture

The Doha Declaration agrees on negotiations aimed at reducing all forms of export subsidies and trade-distorting domestic support. Although the declaration does not commit the European Union to phase out its agriculture export subsidies, it opens the way of reducing export subsidy. This issue also applies to the export credits and food aid in the United States, thus can further reduce the level of dumping in agriculture products.

II. Implementation - related issues, which include:

A. Textiles and Clothing
The Uruguay Round established a phasing out of textile quotas by the year 2005. After that, the developing countries have been complaining that developed countries have delayed implementation of this phasing out until the last minutes. With fierce resistance from U.S., the Doha Declaration requests the Council for Trade in Goods to examine a range of proposals suggested by developing countries.
B. Extension of some other timeframes.
There are other timeframes that developing countries are reluctant to meet. For example, the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, (ASA agreement) which came into force with the establishment of the WTO, sets out the basic rules for food safety and animal and plant health standards in international trade. WTO originally required application of the measures until 1997 for developing countries and until 2000 for the least developed countries. The Doha Declaration also agreed to extend the timeframe for developing countries to comply with sanitary measures, and to consider requests for other extensions in the areas of Trade Related Investment Measures and Customs Valuation agreements. This agreement temporarily exclude developing countries to worry about extra costs added to their exporting products.

III. TRIPs and public health

Although the U.S. and European Union intended to reach more restrictive patent laws, the Doha conference maintained the original TRIP agreement. A separate declaration on TRIPs and public health was reached in Doha. The statement agrees that TRIPs can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of public health and favorable to access to medicines. Thus Doha Ministerial singled out public health as a special issue for intellectual property. In addition, the agreements also grant member countries "the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency (e.g. public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics)". In such circumstances, countries are permitted to waive TRIPs requirements for prior negotiation with patent owners, prior to overriding a patent. Furthermore, WTO delayed the implementation of TRIPs for least-developed countries (LDCs) until 2016.

IV. Singapore issues

The Singapore Ministerial in 1996 left four issues as follows:
a. Investment
Issues about trade related investors' rights. For example, whether investors' right to use imported goods as inputs should depend on their export performance.
b. Competition
Monoplies and exclusive service suppliers are against the rules of WTO. WTO members should secure fair competition in trade. And governments of different countries have the rights to act against anti-competitive practices, and to work together to limit these practices.
c. Transparency of government procurement
Favored government procurement may be an effective way to protect domestic industries. To secure free trade, WTO also calls for enhancing the transparency of government procurement.
d. Trade facilities
With the reduction of trade barriers, developed WTO members also calls for the simplification of trade procedures, such as the provision of more information about products and the construction of relevant infrastructures.
These issues remain one point of disagreement between developed and developing countries. Developed countries want to address these issues as an effort to enlarge their market access in the developing countries. However, developing countries believed that such agreements could only add to their negotiation burden without providing them much benefit. The Doha declaration further delayed such negotiations after the fifth Ministerial.

V. Trade and Environment

There are about 200 international agreements outside the WTO dealing with various environmental issues currently in force. They are called multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). With a view to enhancing the mutual supportiveness of trade and environment, the Doha Ministerial agreed to negotiate upon:

a. the relationship between existing WTO rules and MEAs
b. procedures for regular information exchange between MEA Secretariats and the relevant WTO committees, and the criteria for the granting of observer status
c. the reduction/elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and services.

Emphasizing the importance of technical assistance and capacity building in the field of trade and environment to developing countries, the Doha Ministerial also encouraged WTO members to share expertise and experience for environmental reviews at the national level.