Trade in Services: The Doha Development Agenda Negotiations and U.S. Goals
Abstract
The United States and the other 153 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been conducting a set or "round" of negotiations called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) since the end of 2001. The DDA?s main objective is to refine and expand the rules by which WTO members conduct foreign trade with one another. A critical element of the DDA round is the negotiations pertaining to foreign trade in services. Trade in services has been covered under multilateral rules only since 1995 with the entry into force of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and of the Uruguay Round Agreements creating the WTO. The negotiations on services in the DDA round have two fundamental objectives. One objective is to reform the current GATS rules and principles. The second objective is for each member country to open more of its service sectors to foreign competition. The WTO services negotiations have been going on for more than 10 years. However, as with the negotiations in agriculture and non-agriculture market access, the services negotiations have proceeded slowly with missed deadlines and few results. The prospects for the negotiations are difficult to evaluate at this point. It is not unusual for negotiations to lag as participants wait to place their best negotiating positions on the table until just before crucial deadlines are reached. In July 2006, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy suspended the DDA negotiations, including the services negotiations, because major WTO members could not agree on the terms or modalities for negotiations in agriculture and nonagriculture market access. He resumed the negotiations in 2007. In 2009, negotiators from major groups of developed and developing countries have worked to nail down the basic elements of a draft text; however, they failed so far to reach a consensus on the basic negotiating modalities.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 07, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA518916
Entities
People
- William H. Cooper
Organizations
- Library of Congress