Selon Philippe Legrain, l'échec du Round de Doha est un désastre mais les Etats-Unis ne sont pas blâmables:
Whenever negotiations fail, all sides must take some of the blame. And the US, for good reasons and bad, is guilty mainly of being too ambitious to free up world trade - which is meant to be what the WTO is about.Une fois de plus, le secteur agricole s'en sort haut la main :
For sure, America's agricultural subsidies are harmful and wasteful, but the US was prepared to slash them if other countries were willing to lower their farm tariffs, thereby giving its farmers access to new export markets. Multilateral trade negotiations are never pretty, but they have the potential to harness exporters' interests to overcome the lobbying power of producers that fear foreign competition.
The flexibility that the EU and India wanted the US to show was a willingness to settle for the status quo rather than pursue the benefits of freer trade. The main culprits for Doha's failure are those who refused to budge on freeing trade, not those who set their aim too high. We may all come to pay the price for their cowardice.
In Europe, the United States and Japan, farmers account for a tiny percentage of the work force and the economy. But they have become the pivot of global trade talks, able to make or break a trade deal.
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