The End Game of the Global Regime: A False Promise of Free Markets

Abstract

To recap our argument thus far, Chapter 4 ended by detailing the embryonic global regime in sugar, inaugurated by the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the inclusion of agriculture into the neo-liberal project as heralded by the WTO. The subsequent three chapters considered the extent to which this project has actually manifested itself in the regimes of three key regions: the EU-ACP, the US, and Asia. Each chapter found that, while the initial attempt at multilateral liberalisation under the Uruguay Round had been variously fudged, in different ways each region had experienced a recalibration of its rules and norms to a more globally orientated regime. The constitutionalism of trade relations, the changing strategies of corporate investment and market development, and the new expressions of capitalist farming each pointed toward the decreased importance of national borders, even if the traditional barometer for measuring their importance, the level of trade barriers, remained fairly constant. This chapter now returns to the issue of multilateral liberalisation and the attempts made over the last decade to take a bigger bite out of these trade barriers and entrench a more liberal, and thus more global, sugar regime. It looks especially at the negotiations in the WTO Doha Round, which began in 2001, as a means of assessing what structures of power underpin the formation of these global rules and what effect they are likely to have on the creation and distribution of wealth in the sugar industry.