Negotiating new market access and rules in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has become increasingly complex and difficult. The WTO’s maiden trade round, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), is today the longest running trade round in the history of multilateral trade negotiations. Prior to the DDA’s launch in November 2001, WTO rule-making was restricted to a handful of plurilateral agreements negotiated among the leading exporters of information technology, telecommunications and financial services. In contrast to the lethargy of the multilateral process, there has been a rapid proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs), which undermine the multilateral regime’s non-discriminatory norms.

Several factors, past and present, explain the WTO’s negotiating drift and the deadlock that thwarts the conclusion of the DDA. The history of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) reflects the marginalization of developing country interests; the assertion by the major economic powers of their own market access interests in foreign markets (a mercantilist approach); and trade protectionism in the major developed country markets (Wilkinson 2006a; Finger 2007). This has resulted in an ‘asymmetry of economic opportunity’ against developing countries and the persistence of unbalanced negotiating texts in favour of developed countries in the GATT up to the Uruguay Round (Wilkinson 2006b). In the current Doha Round, the collapse of several ministerial meetings can be partly attributed to the continuation of this protectionist tendency (Ismail 2009a).