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World Trade (Doha Development Agenda)

The Minister has heard a passionate series of speeches and a passionate debate. Members have expressed an almost universal disillusion with the fact that a round as important as the Doha development round should have crashed into a brick wall. It is suspended. I came to this portfolio in the spring and it was like watching a slow-motion train crash. In meeting after meeting, people desperately tried to claw together an agreement, but they had to give ground. There were statements of hope, but in the end we reached the point where we now remain. I join other people who have little hope for the revival of that process. It says little about the developed world that the US and the EU, two great trading blocs, should have acted as if protectionism were an important strand of their economic survival. The economic areas that they attempted to protect were marginal, amounting to less than 5 per cent. in almost every case. We must be honest: the game played by the US and EU has been not economic, but political to protect marginal votes in marginal constituencies, whether by the United States with its congressional elections, and its presidential election in 2008, or by the French and other European Governments.