Dan,

It is required to pin point what cross-issue linkage Ministers like Nath are missing. The line from India and countries in that camp is very easy - EU and America are asking rest of the world to pay (in terms of trade concessions) for EU and America giving up their bad habits of bloated tariffs on Agriculture. It is like alcoholic holding rest of the family at ransom - give me more money if you want me to quit alcohol!

In the end it is that simple. Tragedy is intelligent blogs likes yours and many commentators leaning to Right would never speak, will never put a clear and decent case explaining all the details. I wonder at times whether ‘no logical response’ attitude borders on arrogance....

Anyway, as the trade negotiations proceed; every passing day does not reduce the strength of Asian economies. On the other hand it increases.

Umesh.

Correction - read 'bloated subsidies' in place of 'bloated tariffs'.

Umesh--interesting point, that seems to be the view of countries like India and Brazil.

It seems to me, though, that the problem is that trade negotiations are about give and take, not guilt-tripping or badgering one side to stop doing something bad. If India and others want the U.S. and EU to give up agricultural subsidies, it is fully in the tradition of international trade talks for the U.S. and EU to ask for something in return.

At least I think it is. Are there examples where countries have given up something just because they were forced to do so? I suppose that may happened to developing countries in the past, but I doubt it will happen with the large developed economies.

Your point about Asian economies continuing to grow and prosper regardless of the fate of the Doha round is certainly well taken and probably is a reason for the round's slow progress.

True, you come to trade talks in order to ‘give and take’ and not to pass value judgments. But assuming negotiations on the ‘as is basis’ is a simplistic view. Beyond the prevailing trade situation of these countries; there are other extraneous considerations which do come into the picture. Otherwise, when India asks America to remove visa cap or simplify immigration why would America mention security reasons; which after 9/11 do seem relevant.

The other consequence of ‘as is basis’ approach - countries like India would also use such argument for wrong reasons. Say India has not traditionally allowed direct investment in Retail sector. It can argue that, India will remove those restrictions if the right price is paid.

This way of thinking does not seem much different than what broke Kyoto accord (not that I support that accord). America wants to continue the pollution and that is what America has been doing historically in prodigious manner. If rest of the world wants America to give up that habit; rest of the world will have to pay. The reasoning that pollution is ‘externally’ bad to the system is completely ignored here. So the question is then do we address global issues only on this brute force basis? That is how foreign policies are run is a different matter. Or else we would be never making any efforts to change behavior of nation states.

Same is the case in trade negotiations. Argument from countries like India regarding EU and American agriculture subsidies is an attempt to refer criteria which is outside the usual rules of the game – ‘as is basis’. My hunch is if we look carefully into these trade negotiations; we will start finding all such extraneous references in all sorts of places. The important point is as a general public, we all need to know more about that.

Very interesting site, beautiful design, thank.