Scope for real trade talks
The trade talks in Hong Kong are expected to end with no concrete progress, and World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy has accordingly tried to dampen expectations.
American offers on diminishing or removing some subsidies - while supplementing hidden protections - are unacceptable to Europe. And this is known by the Group of 20 (G20), led by Brazil, India and China. The G20 is an emerging force in its own right, and it can reject proposals.
The WTO's original principles included preventing the formation of protectionist bilateral or multilateral trading blocs. The organisation should now re-engineer itself in that spirit, bearing in mind that some bilateral pacts can address practical trading issues.
So, free-trade agreements and WTO processes should follow parallel tracks. The WTO could set out policies and principles that facilitate, guide and co-ordinate the bilateral and multilateral processes between nations.
The WTO has come to be seen by most developing countries as a tool of leverage to promote the policy interests of the Group of Eight leading industrialised countries, at the expense of the developing world.
A new approach would help the WTO meet its objectives and, moreover, make possible a more natural trading process - in line with nations' actual realities rather than abstract academic formulas.
The rise of the G20 is a healthy development. By closing poverty gaps, raising incomes and developing domestic consumption, these countries can make their own economies less dependent on exports.
Their markets will open to media, services and technology sectors - areas where G8 nations retain competitive advantages. But the G20's economic rise will promote the integration of economic advantages for all. This will replace the maintenance of the international status quo by manipulating the growth and development of poor countries - which draws angry protesters to WTO talks.
For a peaceful and stable global future, the priorities of at least some G8 countries need to change. This is where Mr Lamy's comment - 'The WTO's core business is not distributing welfare. [It] is creating wealth' - takes the process down the wrong track. The WTO's role is to create a fair trading system.
The organisation should not become a forum to help G8 nations create wealth at the cost of sustaining cyclical poverty in the developing world. Until this message is understood, expect more Cancun-like collapses and more Hong Kong-type stalemates in the future.
To some extent, the next WTO ministerial round could look to the G20. This emerging group should set the pace and direction for the reform of our international trading system. Moreover, China must recognise its own role - and the need to take the initiative together with India and Brazil - to project new leadership for G20 objectives in the future.
The free-trade agreement between China and Chile is an example of how Beijing can exert pressure for beneficial change in the WTO structure. If China enters into more such agreements, it will make the WTO less relevant unless it changes its structure and focus.
The WTO should not be the United Nations of trade - a forum for poor nations to debate while policies are dictated by the rich.
Because certain G8 countries have failed to push through their agendas, they have chosen to postpone the G20's concerns in the Hong Kong talks. But the issues will not disappear: they are just being avoided.
So, shouldn't the ministers be discussing how to constructively re-engineer the WTO process? Can we wait another two years?
In Seattle and Cancun, protesters united to block ministers from entering the meeting. This time, they should block them from leaving.
Laurence Brahm is a political economist, author, filmmaker and founder of Shambhala Foundation
