The Economist on the Hongkong Round

The Economist predicts that nothing significant will come out of the Hongkong round:

LONG before any trade minister sets foot in Hong Kong, it has become clear that next week's meeting of the World Trade Organisation will fall depressingly short of its goals. Officially, the gathering is meant to agree on the broad contours of a deal to free trade in farm goods, industrial tariffs and services. Thanks, in particular, to Europe's intransigence over cutting farm tariffs, that will not happen. The ministers may be able to report modest progress (such as a vague promise to accelerate the elimination of cotton subsidies) but the guts of a Doha deal will be delayed yet again.

... Europe is shamefully reluctant to cut its farm tariffs, even though poor countries would gain more from better access to rich-country markets than from lower rich-country farm subsidies. Outrageously, Europe's negotiators are touting their protectionism as a gift to the poor. Some of the world's poorest countries already get preferential access to Europe's markets. Lower tariffs for everyone, argue the negotiators from Brussels, would reduce this preference, leaving the favoured few relatively worse off. That may be true, but preferential tariff schemes are often less generous than they appear. Moreover, the countries that suffer from seeing their preferences eroded need financial compensation, rather than to be used as an excuse for stymieing a deal that, if it is ambitious enough, could help many more poor people.

I pointed out earlier, that things did not look promising. We may all be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it.