The Real WTO

The World Trade Organization on Friday, July 18, circulated a draft statement for the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in September, underscoring vast gaps in current WTO negotiations to liberalize global trade while simultaneously providing a justification, however meager, for holding the meeting in Cancun. "The somewhat skeletal nature of this first draft is a reflection of the reality of our present situation," a cover note for the four-page draft said. "Also no one wanted to commit themselves to any topics they couldn't discuss while hung over."

The draft lists 25 fields of concern in trade talks, including agriculture, market access for nonagricultural products, and trade and investment — many of them containing dotted blanks to be filled pending progress from global trade negotiators. Progress may be slow to come, however; as one WTO minister who declined to be named noted, "We'll be in [expletive] Cancun. Are we going to discuss timetables for developed nations to remove their duties on imported clothing or are we going to discuss timetables for well-developed women to recognize their duty to remove their clothing? I'm asking you."

Previous drafts of the agenda have been modified somewhat to take advantage of the location. Also to be investigated at the Cancun meeting are the possible utility of beads as an international currency; the legality of anti-dumping protocols implemented in the girls' bathroom; trade factors explaining the differences in the price of tequila at various establishments; the natural resource-access policies of Sigma Nus versus Tri-Delts; whether club-entrance tariffs are illegal under WTO rules; and how much, in fact, the WTO rules.

"It'll be a full agenda," said another WTO minister. "I hear the resort is all-inclusive, but there's supposed to be this crazy club like half a mile away where we can really get good discussions going on topics of mutual interest. That's what we're telling [WTO Director-General Supachai] Panitchpakdi, anyway. His wife won't let him come, so let's just say that, in the end, discussion of the proper implementation of the Doha Declaration is going to be widely judged to be unproductive. Unless the girls, you know, like that stuff."

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