The E.U. offered some major concessions in advance, in particular a signal that if the Doha Round is completed it will phase out all its export subsidies for farm goods. Export subsidies are the most widely reviled type of aid to agriculture because they go directly for crops that are shipped into other countries' markets. The E.U. also gave up demands to expand WTO rules into new areas such as international investment, a proposal that developing countries viewed as pushing the organization too far.
For his part, U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick sent a letter to all WTO members in January and visited numerous foreign capitals to convey the message that despite the political pressures of the U.S. election campaign, Washington genuinely wanted to try this year to restart the Doha Round, which was launched in November 2001 with an original deadline of Dec. 31, 2004. (That deadline is now well out of reach, trade officials agree.) At the same time, Zoellick was openly warning that if the Doha Round remained moribund, the United States would devote its trade energies to smaller pacts -- with Australia, Morocco, Thailand, Colombia and other nations interested in dealing bilaterally.
"What came after Cancun was the crude reality of statements by the United States, saying to countries, 'If you don't want to deal in the WTO, we will deal elsewhere,' " said Arancha Gonzalez, the spokeswoman for E.U. Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.
Zoellick and his aides were not shy during the gatherings last week about driving home the point that the WTO's future was on the line. "In a lot of the meetings, we said -- and others did, too -- 'If this thing falls apart, who knows when it will get started again? Who knows after two failures in a row?' " said a senior U.S. official. " 'Who knows whether this organization will be able to continue as a place where you can negotiate agreements?' "
That is not to say that participants were willing to sacrifice key interests for the sake of a deal. "It could have gone down," Zoellick said in a brief interview. "In fact, [Friday] I thought it might."
But Pedro de Camargo Neto, Brazil's former chief agricultural trade official, said with some exasperation, "Everyone felt we needed an agreement" because of the perception that the WTO would go over a cliff otherwise.
"They created the cliff -- it's a nonexisting cliff, in my opinion," said Camargo, who was here pressing his own country's delegation for a more ambitious agreement. "But it was a big factor."
So at his news conference, Zoellick, who after Cancun had blasted Brazil as one of the "can't do and won't do" countries, heaped praise on his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, for the "constructive" role he had played in Geneva.
Asked how he would now characterize Brazil and its allies, Zoellick replied, "I guess we 'did do.' So it's 'can done.' "
