WTO negotiations conducted outside the Doha Round

Rounds are a more controversial topic in the WTO period than they were in the GATT period. The eight that were conducted from the first Geneva Round in 1947 through the Uruguay Round of 1986 to 1994 provided the venues in which the great majority of all multilateral bargains were reached in the GATT system. That is true even for many of the accession negotiations, for while those talks were technically held outside the scope of a round, they often dovetailed with the larger initiative; acceding countries were permitted to engage in the multilateral negotiations, and the terms of their own accessions were often finalized as the end of a round. In the WTO period, by contrast, rounds have come under challenge in two ways. One is through the successes achieved outside of this structure, especially in the sectoral and other deals reached in the period that fell between the end of the Uruguay Round and the launch of the Doha Round. The other is through the apparent (though not definitive) failure of that latter round.