I have yet to read someone pleased with the current WTO round being saddled with the title “Doha Development Agenda.” Some, like Joe Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton, argue that the name is misleading because the rich countries are not actually focused on development-friendly liberalization. Others believe that the moniker poisoned the negotiations from the start by giving developing countries reason to believe they might enjoy a “round for free” in which they would not have to liberalize their own trade barriers. In fact, each side is unhappy with the DDA because the other side interprets the phrase differently.

Joseph Francois is a member of the latter camp, but he thinks this clash is getting old:

If you surf the WTO website, Ministerial declarations, NGO news feeds, and the pronouncements of the alphabet soup of developing country blocks – G20, G33, LDCs, SVEs – you get the distinct impression that what matters is OECD concessions. Yet this focus on the OECD is an exercise in misdirection. Preferential access is not the key to trade-based growth… [R]ecent research suggests that preferences do not work as advertised, help parties they are not meant to help, and otherwise represent a triumph of form over substance…

If the OECD would resign from its role as scapegoat (scrapping industrial protection and then walking away), the South could then move past its post-colonial obsession with OECD import protection and finally take steps to place its own collective house in order.

Francois argues that the Doha round’s focus on an intransigent issue – agriculture – is damaging, and that WTO members would be best off declaring the round complete via some watered-down compromise and moving on to address more important issues, such as multilateralizing regionalism and promoting South-South liberalization.