Language, power and multilateral trade negotiations

ABSTRACT

Warnings that a breakdown in multilateral trade liberalization would bring about an upsurge in protectionist sentiment, the possible collapse of the multilateral trading system and, in the most doomsday of scenarios, the fragmentation of the global economy have been an intrinsic part of trade negotiations since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was first negotiated. What is seldom acknowledged, however, is the role that this language of crisis and collapse – what might be called a ‘crisis discourse’ – has had on framing trade negotiations and in maintaining forward momentum in the liberalization process. This discourse has played a role in facilitating the kind of institutional development that the GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO) has undergone – helping to push through bargains among GATT contracting parties and WTO members that have been (and remain) deeply asymmetrical – and driving the trade agenda forward at moments when the institution appears deadlocked; and it has continued to play a role in the current round of negotiations.

The aims of the paper are twofold. First, the paper explores the content of the crisis discourse. Second, it examines the way in which the discourse has been deployed as a means of reframing trade negotiations in such a way that the likelihood of their continuation and ultimate conclusion increases. The paper does this by focusing on the collapse and resumption of the negotiations in the wake of the WTO's 2005 Hong Kong ministerial meeting, though the crisis discourse and its intensification at moments of intransigence has been a key feature of trade negotiations since the Allies first sat down to develop a trade architecture in the wartime and early post-war years.

KEYWORDS:

• WTO
• trade negotiations
• Doha Development Agenda
• developing countries
• language
• power
• discourse

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is grateful to the British Academy (award number SG-36194) for funding for the early stages of this research. He is also grateful to the anonymous referees and to Claire Annesley, Jennifer Clapp, Donna Lee, Craig Murphy, Tony Payne and Nicola Phillips for their comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention, Chicago, 1 March 2007 and at the ‘New Political Economy of Globalization’ workshop, Murphy Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans, 20–21 April 2007.

Notes

¹ Bergsten did not actually use the term ‘bicycle’ at first though Jagdish Bhagwati credits him with putting forward the idea. See Bhagwati (1988: 41).

² Interview with a member of the Nigerian delegation (anonymous), Hong Kong, 13 December 2005.

³ Comments during press briefing, 15 December 2005, at the WTO Hong Kong ministerial meeting.

⁴ Conversation with the author during the Joint Initiative for Policy Dialogue/Brooks World Poverty Institute task force on trade meeting, University of Manchester, 2–3 February 2006.

⁵ Conversation (anonymous) with the author during the Joint Initiative for Policy Dialogue/Brooks World Poverty Institute task force on trade meeting, University of Manchester, 2–3 February 2006. Similar views were also expressed in interviews with delegates from Nigeria, Togo, Malawi, Indonesia, Costa Rica, India, Pakistan, Uruguay and Malaysia during the Hong Kong ministerial conference, 13–18 December 2005, and in follow-up telephone interviews in January/February 2006.

⁶ Interviews with delegates from Pakistan, Jamaica, Mauritius, Uganda and Kenya conducted in June 2006 and November 2007.

⁷ Interview and informal conversations, 14–15 November 2007.

⁸ I am grateful to Sylvia Ostry for her time discussing this and many other points as well as to anonymous members of the US, EU and Japanese trade delegations.