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World Trade Organization: Congress Faces Key Decisions as Efforts to Reach Doha Agreement Intensify

GAO-07-379 Published: Mar 05, 2007. Publicly Released: Mar 05, 2007.
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Highlights

President Bush has identified the success of global trade talks launched in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001 as one of the United States' top trade policy priorities. Known as the Doha Development Agenda, the talks are an important means of spurring global growth and development. Completing the talks in 2006 was considered essential for an agreement to qualify for streamlined congressional consideration under the U.S. Trade Promotion Authority. However, the talks collapsed in late July 2006 in the face of wide differences over the extent of agricultural reform and how best to promote economic development in poor countries. Efforts to break the deadlock continue. Given the tenuous state of this central plank of U.S. trade policy, GAO updated its series of prior reports. In this report, we assess (1) the overall status of the Doha Round negotiations now and the progress that had been made prior to and since the breakdown of the talks, (2) the substantive divisions among key World Trade Organization (WTO) members that led to an environment of deadlock and the eventual suspension of the negotiations, and (3) the possible economic and other ramifications if the round is not concluded satisfactorily.

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Agricultural industryAgricultural programsDeveloping countriesEconomic policiesForeign trade agreementsImport restrictionInternational organizationsInternational tradeInternational trade restrictionSubsidiesTariffsTrade policies