A Study On The Agriculture Negotiations Of Doha Round

The Fourth Ministerial Conference was held by WTO in Doha, Qatar, in November, 2001. The"Ministerial Declaration"agreed in the conference has started the Doha Development Agenda officially. The agenda was scheduled to entirely end the negotiations before January 1, 2005. However, the nations refused to compromise to one another regarding the trade of the agricultural products, leading to the lag of the Doha Round by and by. Especially in July, 2008, the developing countries had disputes with the developed countries in the"Special Safeguard Mechanism", which made the Doha Round nearly break down. Looking back to the tough process of the 10-year Doha Round, it can be seen the difficulty of the Doha talks centering on the disagreement of three issues concerning the domestic support, market access and export competition of the agriculture talks. They are the legal backbone of the farm produce trade.This paper will be divided into seven parts with the first introduction of the root of the distortion in the world agricultural trade and of the background of agriculture negotiations of the Doha Round. Then, it focuses on the framework achievements of the agriculture talks of the Doha Round, and analyzes the status quo of the China's agricultural trade under the Doha Round. Last but not the least, it elaborates on the reasons why the process of the agriculture talks is so slowly, and the influences of the agriculture talks exerting to our country as well as the ways our country handles the above issues. By analyzing the framework achievements of Doha's agriculture talks, the author thinks that although the developing countries have made some interests in the negotiations, the whole talk is dominated by the developed countries. It is the interests of the developed countries that the agricultural achievements of the Doha Round largely reflects. Harder work is needed in the Doha Round to achieve the free trade of the farm products and to balance the interests between the developed countries and developing countries in agriculture.