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DOHA ROUND: PLEASE CONCLUDE IT NOW!

With the talks about to start, there is not nothing left but be optimistic that the DOHA round will be successfully concluded. The previous negotiations ended in disappointments but hopefully, both sides would have already figured out a way to profitably conclude this story.

The chief of the World Trade Organization is optimistic that an agreement within the next few months is doable and yet refuses to make a prediction. Such an attitude belies the true state of the negotiation which is, uncertain. The past several negotiations failed mostly because both sides refused to budge. The US insists that the developing countries should open their markets to agricultural exports but the other side rightfully contends that the US should first put an end to subsidies of American farmers. As previously discussed, the developing economies, which stand to endanger its local farmers by exposing them to products imported from the US and other developing states, will be at the losing end of such a deal. Uncompetitive US farm products will be able to penetrate and compete in foreign markets simply because of state subsidies. Economists call it dumping. I don’t know how the US, the supposed champion of free trade, is able to sit in the negotiating table with a straight face.

Reading my previous notes about this story, I realized that the DOHA round has taken a different form. Instead of it being a way of bringing the benefits of global trade to the less developed economy, it has transformed as a US opportunity to increase its market reach. The way I see it, it has become a way to unjustly fatten American farmers at the expense of poor countries.
"Cotton officials from Chad, Mali, Benin and Burkina Faso met to renew their campaign against foreign agricultural subsidies they say hurt their farmers and lower global cotton prices.

Burkina Faso's representative to the World Trade Organization, Moussa Niebe, says Africans are not looking for favors from rich trade partners.

"This is really a problem of justice," Nebie said. We are just asking them to respect the rules of international trade, the rules of the WTO [World Trade Organization], and the rules of the free market. "
I hope that the representatives of the poor countries will not be pressured and sell their countrymen. I also pray that the US will work towards the real aim of the DOHA round which is, to make poor countries benefit from world trade.

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