Though hard to believe, hopes for the Doha Round of world trade negotiations just got darker. Over the weekend, U.S. President George W. Bush lost his "fast-track" power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended by Congress. Earlier, trade ministers from the "Group of Four" — Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States — met in Potsdam, Germany, to see if they could hammer out a deal to take to the World Trade Organization for consideration, but those talks have collapsed amid mutual recriminations. The next steps will be even more difficult.
The Doha Round was launched six years ago with the original aim of focusing on developing country access to markets in the developed world. Politics quickly pre-empted the good intentions as developed economies demanded large concessions from their trade partners in exchange for liberalizing their agriculture markets, the key concern of developing nations.
Talks were stalemated at first by the inability of the EU, the U.S. and Japan to agree among themselves on changes in agricultural protection. In recent months, however, Brussels and Washington had appeared to find common ground, and the result was the Potsdam meeting. That has broken down with both sides blaming the other.