The last week in July has long been a major deadline at the World Trade Organization in Geneva.  Ever since the WTO 2013 Ministerial meeting in Bali, the organization has sought to produce a work program for completing the Doha Round.  Understandably, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo talked a lot about that elusive work program in the last days of July.  It was the topic of his remarks to the WTO General Council on July 28, the speech that is the source for today's quote. 

It was also the focus of Mr. Azevêdo's remarks to the Trade Negotiations Committee - another committee of the whole - on July 31.  Here are some excerpts from that second speech:

"At midnight tonight [July 31] the mandate to deliver the work programme will lapse.

His mention of Nairobi, of course, was a reference to the WTO's 10th Ministerial Conference, which will be held there from December 15 to 18, 2015. 

Doha, TPP, and Other Negotiations.  Today's featured quote caught our eye because it captures not just the situation in the WTO but that in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, negotiations as well.  Last month's TPP ministerial meeting was to have been the one that brought those talks to a conclusion.  It didn't.  Yes, the principals are saying they made great progress and that they are 98 percent there.  Still, Roberto Azevêdo's observation about there being "large gaps between what some members want to put on the table and what they want in return" would seem to have some relevance to TPP as well as to the WTO. 

 
Other Negotiations.  July was not without its successes.  The big one in the WTO was the July 24 announcement of an agreement in the talks to expand the Information Technology Agreement.  That was a major achievement, and one rightly and repeatedly cited by Director-General Azevêdo as proof that team WTO can produce.

Then yesterday, the 4th of August, there was another big development.  The European Union and Vietnam announced that they have concluded a trade agreement that will "remove nearly all tariffs on goods traded between the two economies."  Vietnam is a TPP country, and so the question arises, how does the EU-Vietnam agreement compare with TPP?  It's a big question and one that lots of analysts will put a lot of effort into over the next several months.

Some reactions are already coming in.  Julie Hughes, the president of the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, described the new agreement as "substantially more liberal than where we are with TPP," in so far as textiles and apparel are concerned.   Both the EU and Vietnam should benefit from that. 

***

Some believe that actions and statements that arise from extreme circumstances are in effect unique to those conditions.  Others see such developments as useful models generally, even in less severe conditions.  We take the latter view, and to us there was a parallel of sorts between Winston Churchill's speech in the Parliament on June 4, 1940, and Roberto Azevêdo's remarks in the WTO last week.  Essentially, the parallel is that both leaders were faced with the challenge of paying tribute to those who managed a difficult situation while at the same time stating plainly, first, that the result was nonetheless a failure, and, second, that the effort needs to be redoubled, because in the end failure is not an option. 

If you read the two Azevêdo speeches, you will see that he does not stint in his praise for the work that has been done.  And, as the above excerpts from those speeches make clear, he is doing all he can to urge his colleagues on to an even greater and more successful effort.

The Churchill speech we are talking about is the one he gave after the incredible rescue of the British Expeditionary Force from the beaches of Dunkirk in late May and early June of 1940.  He described in details the challenges faced by the British Army, their rescuers, and the special role of the RAF.  He was lavish, stirring, and sincere in his praise for all of them.   But, he said:

"We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attribute of a victory.  Wars are not won by evacuations."

The speech goes on to the soaring rhetoric of great determination. 

 

What struck us as parallel with the Azevêdo challenge was the need to look failure in the eye, to name it as such, and yet still move on with determination to a larger goal.  Yes, Mr. Azevêdo's challenge is a much less dramatic one.  That is part of the difficulty.  He doesn't really have his team's attention.   Many of them are focused on other things, including other trade agreements.  Indeed, they are not really a team.  They are collection of ambassadors for competing interests. Yet the fiction of a team is critical to any hope of further success at the WTO.  And Roberto Azevêdo is doing a masterful job at keeping that fiction alive.

 

***

Finally, there is the matter of the Doha Round.  At this point it is a problematic agreement, and its importance lies less in its provisions than in its symbolic value as the gravitational center of the WTO.  The real goal is returning the WTO to its place as the gravitational center of the global trading system.