When the Doha Round of trade negotiations broke down some weeks ago, no one was particularly surprised. Nor did anyone seem to care all that much.
Indeed, people appeared to take the collapse of the talks as the seal of approval to go ahead and plunge ever more deeply into bilateral trade deals and preferential economic arrangements. This is a mistake. It isn't even logical. We are supposed to live in a globalized world. You either have a global and open economy or a fragmented and "seclusionist" economy. You can't have it both ways.
Multilateralism is said to be out of date. It is supposed to be unworkable with so many people involved, each with their own agenda and conflicting interests. This is silly. It is precisely because there are so many people involved in the trading network, that there are so many diverse interests to be considered and there is so much disparity in the situations people face, that multilateralism is required.