How 5 Billion Got Left Behind; At best, the Doha Round will look pretty much like its predecessors--a deal cooked up in the back room between Washington and Brussels.

Byline: Jeffrey E. Garten (Garten is dean of the Yale School of Management.)

It's high noon for global trade negotiations. since the breakdown of talks in Cancun, Mexico, last September, Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, has tried frantically to get what is called the Doha round back on track. He has flown more than 250,000 kilometers, including making six trips to Africa and four to Latin America and the Caribbean. He has implored top officials in the United States, Europe and Japan, and all over the developing world, to return to the negotiating table.

By July 31 we will know the outcome of his efforts. That's the deadline for producing a road map to guide the negotiations to an end. If agreement isn't reached this week, the combination of the U.S. presidential election and the installation of a new European Commission in November--both of which could lead to policy reviews and new chief negotiators--could sap all the momentum and jeopardize the very future of the WTO and all it stands for. Unfortunately, even if the negotiators agree to move forward, the ultimate results are apt to fall short of Doha's loudly proclaimed goal: to give developing nations a greater share and say in global trade.

Whatever happens this week in Geneva, at best the Doha round will look pretty much like its predecessors--a deal cooked up in the back room between Washington and Brussels with their narrow interests in mind and a few crumbs offered to poorer nations. For example, nothing currently on the table would significantly lower U.S. and European Union agricultural subsidies and barriers to imports of developing-world food and industrial products, certainly not to the extent those countries require.

More important--and much less noticed--is the fact that very little will be done to give such nations access to cheap generic drugs, or to lower the obstacles to migrant workers seeking jobs in the developed world, or to further open rich markets to the competitive maritime shipping and construction industries of developing nations. The cards will still be stacked in particular against the 50 very poor countries such as Haiti, Zambia, Nepal and Cambodia, all of which need extra-special trade assistance.

To be sure, Western trade officials would see any result as better than outright failure. And most of them would say that the place to get at real development issues is not in the WTO, where developing countries are required to engage in reciprocal bargaining, but through foreign aid and organizations like the World Bank.

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